God Bless America

By Frank Bruni

“God bless America,” our president said, dutifully, after the bloody Sunday in Las Vegas. It’s a wish worth repeating. It’s an intervention sorely needed in a country seriously lost.

God bless America, where shock over a torrent of bullets that sends dozens more to the morgue doesn’t last, if indeed there’s shock at all. This kind of violence is no longer exceptional. But we are. No other affluent country can match our massacres or, in the face of them, our paralysis. We stand out boldly in this regard. We lead.

God bless America, awash in self-delusion. House Speaker Paul Ryan responded to the horror in Las Vegas by saying that “what truly defines us” are the acts of heroism we learned of, while the shooting itself “is not who we are.” How does he figure that? Las Vegas was one of the worst but hardly the first. And it demands more than the gauzy pieties and press-a-button platitudes that too many politicians spout.

God bless America, where the juxtaposition of two articles published by this section of this newspaper on Monday said it all. The first was pictorial, a calendar that captured all the mass shootings in the United States since June 12, 2016, when gunfire ruptured the party in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. There had been 521 in 477 days. Last March was a curious lull. Just 22 mass shootings then.

The second article was by Steve Israel, a former congressman, and its transcendent point was in its terrifying headline: “Nothing Will Change After the Las Vegas Shooting.” That’s an outrageous forecast. In all likelihood, it’s an accurate one, too.

God bless America, where the fact that we can’t be 100 percent sure that a given new gun restriction would lessen the dying becomes an excuse not to give it a try, though the stakes couldn’t be higher, the sirens couldn’t be louder and each new marker surpasses the last.

In Newtown, Conn., in 2012, 26 people perished, 20 of them children. In Orlando four years later, 49 died. And in Las Vegas, the count so far is 59. What’s the trip wire for urgency and action? Triple digits?

God bless America, where the Second Amendment seems to be getting a hell of a lot more respect right now than the First. It has become totemic, part of a larger culture war that blinds too many Americans to the amendment’s conception in an entirely different era and context, long before the efficient killing machines of today. There’s the right to bear arms, sure, but there’s also the right to walk into a nightclub or a concert — or to send a child off to school — without a sense of dread that’s increasingly and fully warranted. Aren’t we entitled to that, too?

God bless America, where a whole class of sellouts, Donald Trump prime among them, lack the character to stand up to the death merchants of the National Rifle Association. At the group’s April convention, Trump told them: “You came through big for me, and I am going to come through for you.” Tit for tat and forget about the lives potentially sacrificed to the deal. They will be accorded their pro forma moments of silence. They will get the usual candlelight vigils. It will be pretty and it will be almost pointless, because the band will play on.

God bless America, where we’ve outsourced empathy and righteous anger from the White House to television talk shows and learned to lean on the comedians who host them. On Monday those jokesters seriously channeled our emotions and sounded the appropriate alarms. Politics and entertainment don’t merely overlap. In the Trump era, they’ve traded job descriptions.

God bless America, whose partisan fevers are so corrosive that when the musician Caleb Keeter tweeted that his presence in Las Vegas on Sunday had shown him “how wrong” he was to oppose gun control, critics aplenty assailed the selfishness of the epiphany. How about welcoming a convert to a just cause and using his newfound passion as best we can? Wouldn’t that be more constructive?

God bless America, with its sloppy ooze of agenda-driven misinformation. In the hours after the shooting, posts that erroneously identified the shooter and baselessly described him as a Trump-hating liberal or a recent convert to Islam gained serious traction on Google and Facebook, an echo of the fake news in the 2016 presidential election, an example of the conspiracy theories that so many Americans embrace and an illustration of the house of mirrors in which they now stumble around.

“We are working to fix the issue,” a spokesman for Facebook told The Times. A spokesman for Google said, “We’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements.” Pandora cackled. Her box is wide open, and it’s called the internet.

God bless America, with our boundless talent and galling complacency. If we summon enough gratitude for the former to banish the latter, we just might find our way forward.

The U.S. Government Has Become the Ultimate Extension of Donald Trump’s For-Profit Brand

By Naomi Klein

In a lawsuit filed today, the attorneys general of the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia claim that by accepting millions of dollars and countless more perks from foreign governments, President Trump is at the center of an “unprecedented constitutional violation.” Whether it’s $270,000 in payments from a lobbying firm working for the Saudi government or praise from the Ambassador of Georgia (also a paying customer), Trump’s hotels and properties continue to rake it in from governments across the globe, from Turkey to Kuwait to India to Afghanistan to Qatar.

The attorneys general claim that “President Trump’s personal fortune is at stake,” whenever he makes a policy decision, whether it be about taxes, climate change, or foreign relations — a troubling notion, to say the least. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s continued entanglement in his business violates the constitutional emolument clause that, in theory, prevents the president from taking payments from foreign governments. The lawsuit is damning, saying, “never before has a President acted with such disregard for this constitutional prescription.”

Trump, of course, still profits directly from his business dealings, since he has not divested from his business holdings in any way.

I’ve spent the last five months researching the Trump family’s global brand-based empire and the various ways that the president has turned the U.S. government into the ultimate extension of his for-profit brand, so far without any repercussion. So it’s good to see the law starting to catch up. But the lawsuit touches on a fraction of the ways in which Trump is actively profiting from the presidency. As I write in the introduction to “No Is Not Enough,” we are seeing this unprecedented level of self-dealing because Trump’s business model is itself relatively new, and certainly a first for a sitting president:

Trump was never the head of a traditional company but has, rather, long been the figurehead of an empire built around his personal brand — one that has, along with his daughter Ivanka’s brand, already benefited from its merger with the U.S. presidency in countless ways (membership rates at Mar-a-Lago have doubled; Ivanka’s product sales, we are told, are through the roof). The Trump family’s business model is part of a broader shift in corporate structure that has taken place within many brand-based multinationals, one with transformative impacts on culture and the job market.

What this model tells us is that the very idea that there could be – or should be – any distinction between the Trump brand and the Trump presidency is a concept the current occupant of the White House cannot begin to comprehend. The presidency is the crowning extension of the Trump brand.

We are in entirely uncharted territory, because let’s face it: human megabrands are a relatively new phenomenon. There’s no rulebook that foresaw any of this. People keep asking — is he going to divest? Is he going to sell his businesses? Is Ivanka going to? But it’s not at all clear what these questions even mean, because their primary businesses are their names. You can’t disentangle Trump the man from Trump the brand; those two entities merged long ago.

There’s a whole web of ways the Trumps can make money off their names and their official and unofficial roles in the White House. Patronage at Trump hotels and resorts by foreign governments and corporations is probably the least of it. Here’s an extract from another relevant chapter:

The conflicts tipped into self-parody on April 6, 2017, when, the Associated Press reported, “Ivanka Trump’s company won provisional approval from the Chinese government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy.”

But that’s not the only thing that happened that day. “That night, the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to the president of China and his wife for a steak and Dover sole dinner at Mar-a-Lago.” A political summit whose details had been arranged by none other than Jared Kushner. This goes well beyond nepotism; it’s the U.S. government as a for-profit family business.

And a new twist since the book went to press. In China, three labor activists were detained by the government in May while investigating conditions at factories that make shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand. This news came not long after the U.S.-based China Labor Watch alleged that some workers in factories that produced for Ivanka’s brand were paid what amounted to less than a dollar an hour, while being forced to work 12.5-hour days, six days a week. Despite mounting international condemnation, the activists have yet to be released. Could it be that the Chinese government decided to provide the ultimate service to the Trump family of brands: silencing whistleblowers who were exposing ugly corporate truths?

A New York Times reporter wrote earlier this month that, upon visiting Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, she was given a (now-discontinued) brochure dangling the possibility of a treat from Trump himself: “If he is on-site for your big day, he will likely stop in.” Despite protestations to the contrary, the idea that Trump-the-man is still deeply involved in Trump-the-business is very much a part of the whole offer of Trump-branded hotels and clubs. And nowhere more so than at Mar-a-Lago:

Mar-a-Lago has already increased its membership fees, to $200,000 from $100,000. And why not? Now, for your fee, you might find yourself witnessing a high-stakes conversation about national security over dinner. You might get to hobnob with a visiting head of state. You might even get to witness Trump announcing that he has just launched an air assault on a foreign country.

And, of course, you might even get to meet the president himself, and have the chance to quietly influence him. (No public records are kept of who comes and goes from the club, so who knows?) For decades, Trump has been selling the allure of proximity to wealth and power — it is the meaning of his brand. But now he’s able to offer, to his paying customers, the real deal.

Anything that increases Donald Trump’s visibility, and the perception of him as all-powerful, actively increases the value of the Trump brand, and therefore increases how much clients will pay to be associated with it — to slap it on their new condo development, say, or, on a smaller scale, to play on his golf courses or buy one of his ties.

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization has worked relentlessly to expand its global reach. And why not? The brand is more visible now than ever before, and customers are willing to pay. As the lawsuit states, Trump’s “high office gives the Trump brand greater prominence and exposure.” And this is the heart of what we need to understand about how dangerous it is to have a president who is in the business of selling not any one particular product but his name:

Given that what the Trump sons — Eric and Donald Jr. — are selling is ephemeral (a name), a buyer could pay $6 million for it or could pay $60 million. Who’s to judge what constitutes a fair market-value price? More worryingly, who’s to say what services are being purchased when a private company pays millions to lease the Trump brand? Do they really think it’s that valuable to their condo tower, or do they think that by throwing in an extra $5 million, they might be looked on more favorably in other dealings that require a friendly relationship with the White House? It’s very difficult to see how any of this can be untangled. A brand is worth whatever buyers are willing to pay for it. That’s always been the appeal of building a business on this model — that something as ephemeral as a name could be vested with such real-world monetary value.

What’s extraordinary about Donald Trump’s presidency is that now we are all inside the Trump branded world, whether we want to be or not. We have all become extras in his for-profit reality TV show, which has expanded to swallow the most powerful government in the world.

The Trumps aren’t going to stop coming up with new ways to cash in on the presidency anytime soon. Since I finished writing “No Is Not Enough,” they’ve announced yet another creative new way to turn the White House into a for-profit family business, which I wrote about last week.

Enter American Idea, “a new midscale brand” hotel chain whose first properties will be in Mississippi, a red state where Trump won 18 percentage points more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton. This is not just an attempt at crashing the Comfort Inn niche by wrapping it in stars and stripes. It’s also the most vivid window yet into the myriad ways the Trump family is transforming the presidency into a for-profit family business, annihilating the line between government and their web of brands.

It turns out that while the Trump kids were on the campaign trail last year, they weren’t just stumping for their father — they were conducting market research on ways to profit from Trump voters. The sons would return to Trump Tower and report on the quaint and old-timey tastes enjoyed in “real America,” as Eric Trump described it on “Good Morning America.”

As Donald Jr. put it, he realized “there’s something here, there’s a market here that we’ve been missing our entire lives by focusing only on the high end.” And there were more perks to tagging along on the campaign trail. They also met people who donated to the Trump campaign, and some of those very people are now the first partners for this new venture.

So let’s unpack that a bit. In Trump’s world, voters are future customers, campaign donors are future investors, and election results are a rich vein of consumer data.

The new lawsuit, though welcome, is only the first step of understanding the merger of the Trump Organization and the White House – with its almost infinite possibilities for corruption and influence peddling.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz: Trump's Budget Takes a Sledgehammer to What Remains of the American Dream

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, the Trump administration unveiled its $4.1 trillion budget. The plan includes massive cuts to social programs, while calling for historic increases in military spending. The budget proposes slashing $800 billion from Medicaid, nearly $200 billion from nutritional assistance programs, such as food stamps and Meals on Wheels, and more than $72 billion from disability benefits. The plan would also completely eliminate some student loan programs. It would ban undocumented immigrants from receiving support through some programs for families with children, including the child care tax credit. On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont slammed Trump’s budget.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: This is a budget which says that if you are a member of the Trump family, you may receive a tax break of up to $4 billion, but if you are a child of a working-class family, you could well lose the health insurance you currently have through the Children’s Health Insurance Program and massive cuts to Medicaid. At a time when we remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all, this budget makes a bad situation worse in terms of healthcare. In other words, this is a budget that provides massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporate CEOs, and massive cuts to programs that tens of millions of struggling Americans depend upon.

When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he told the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would take on the political and economic establishment, that he would stand up for working people, that he understood the pain that families all across this country were experiencing. Well, sadly, this budget exposes all of that verbiage for what it really was: just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes, nothing more than that.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The ACLU, NAACP and Planned Parenthood have all come out criticizing the budget. Some conservatives are also criticizing the budget. Republican Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina told The New York Times, "Meals on Wheels, even for some of us who are considered to be fiscal hawks, may be a bridge too far," unquote.

The budget also calls for an historic 10 percent increase in military spending and another $2.6 billion to further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border, including $1.6 billion to build Trump’s border wall. In a rare proposed benefit for families, the budget allocates $19 billion for six weeks of paid parental leave for new families—a project that’s been spearheaded by his daughter and senior White House adviser, Ivanka Trump. The budget projects 3 percent economic growth, which economists say is widely unrealistic.

Unlike previous presidents, Trump is unveiling his proposed budget while he’s abroad. David Stockman, former budget director for President Ronald Reagan, said, quote, "This budget is dead before arrival, so he might as well be out of town," unquote.

Well, for more, we go to Joe Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, chief economist for the Roosevelt Institute. He’s the author of numerous books, most recently, The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe.

Joseph Stiglitz, welcome to Democracy Now!

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to the budget that’s just been revealed?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: It’s like everything else: It’s made up. You could say it’s a collection of lies put together. It doesn’t make any economic sense. I don’t think anybody who’s looked at it has—can fathom the economics. I mean, you mentioned one thing, the 3 percent growth rate, which is the largest deviation in estimate relative to the CBO on record. You know, when I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, we wanted to be responsible, and we always were conservative and were very careful, getting the views of everybody, wanted to make sure that our numbers were reasonable. He’s made no pretense to be reasonable.

In fact, what’s striking is, while he assumes that there’s going to be more growth, if you look at the budget, it’s designed to reduce growth. He cuts out support for science, for R&D, which is the basis of productivity growth. He cuts out support for job retraining, so when people leave one job, they can be trained for the next job. He cuts out support for Pell grants, so those who have low income can get the education so they can live up to their potential. All these are things that actually lower economic growth. So I would say this is not a growth budget, this is a no-growth budget.

And then he has the numbers, you know, the gall to have things like—you know, just mind-bending. He says he’s going to—elsewhere, he said he’s going to eliminate the estate tax. And his budget says that he’s going to raise several hundred billion dollars’ more money from an estate tax that is zeroed out. Now, you can make a statement that if we lowered the estate tax a little bit, maybe people will be induced to die more, and maybe we’ll get more revenue. You could make that kind of statement. But one thing you don’t need a Ph.D. is, zero times any number is zero. So if you have a zero estate tax, no matter how many people are dying and how wealthy they are, you’re going to get zero revenue.

And remember, what he’s doing, he’s cutting out the estate tax that benefits 0.2 percent of the economy—of our society. You know, you have to have an estate of more than 10 million, if you’re a married couple, in order to pay anything on the estate tax. And meanwhile, he’s cutting benefits for ordinary Americans—education, health, as you mentioned, food, nutrition. It’s not just the system of social protection that we’ve created, but even the bottom safety net that is—catches people when they’re in trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Donald Trump two years ago, speaking—this is May 21st, 2015—to the right-wing outlet The Daily Signal.

DONALD TRUMP: I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Every other Republican is going to cut. And even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do, because they don’t know where the money is. I do.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he has said, when he was campaigning—actually, he was campaigning against other Republicans when he made the point, "I’m not going to cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security." I mean, we had endless choices of clips to choose from. Joe Stiglitz?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: He lied. He is cutting Medicaid, the largest cut to Medicaid, even beyond what was in his repeal and replace, that didn’t get very far. These are even bigger Medicaid cuts. In terms of so Social Security, one important part of Social Security is disability payments.

AMY GOODMAN: SSDI.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: And, you know, that’s really important. People do get to say, well, they have auto accidents, they get sick, they get cancer—you know, all kinds of things that make them unable to work.

AMY GOODMAN: They get hurt at work.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They can’t work. And he’s cutting that. It’s an important part of our Social Security, of security that people—we provide, as a society, as a basic system of social protection. He’s cutting back on those expenditures. So, all I can say is, you look at that clip, and what he’s doing today is just the opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re talking about cutting—I mean, already the proposed budget from the House was massive when it came to cuts, something like $880 billion in Medicaid cuts. He’s suggesting $616 more billion—$616 billion more, which would basically gut Medicaid.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. And remember, it’s not just for poor people. It’s a major problem for our elderly, who have to go into old age homes, hospice, you know, all—so, it is an extraordinarily important program. Another way of seeing the massiveness of these cuts is that, if you look at what we call a non-defense discretionary—that is to say, you take out Social Security, you take out Medicare, and you take out military—he’s proposing a 40 percent cut in all these programs. And remember, these programs have been cut year after year for the last 25 years, under both Democrats and Republicans, so it’s not like there’s a lot of fat on this. These are already fairly lean. And what he’s doing is just taking an ax to them, a 40 percent reduction.

The consequence of his proposal, I don’t think even he fully understands. For instance, we would lose the vote at the U.N. if he carried out his programs. I mean, so, basically, we’re—we’re saying to international—

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean we’d lose the vote at the U.N.?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, because he’s cutting out all support for international organizations. And if we don’t pay our dues, our core dues, to the U.N., we lose our vote. And they’re an important source of our influence in international politics. So, you know—and this is a consequence of what he is proposing. There is no discussion of what the implications of this 40 percent cut in government. You know, there are some programs that can be cut. That’s clear. But he hasn’t gone pruning. He’s taken an ax and said, "Oh, I can get a balanced budget, if I make up numbers about growth and if I just pretend that I’m going to take a 40 percent cut from somewhere."

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

MICK MULVANEY: I think, for years and years, we’ve simply looked at a budget in terms of the folks who are on the back end of the programs, the recipients of the taxpayer money. And we haven’t spent nearly enough time focusing our attention on the people who pay the taxes.

AMY GOODMAN: Mick Mulvaney. Your response, Joe Stiglitz?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Oh, totally wrong. I mean, I was in the White House for four years. And we did a very, very careful analysis of the benefits and costs, how it would affect taxpayers and ordinary consumers, the rich, the poor, the middle class, when we evaluated the program. We were very, very aware that this was money that people had worked for, earned, and that, on the other hand, they need help in a whole variety of areas, help in sending their kids to college, in buying a home. You know, the—

AMY GOODMAN: This would drastically shrink low-income student loan program.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Oh, some of the programs would be wiped out. So, you know, the American dream, we’ve gradually understood, is really a myth, the fact that anybody can go from the bottom to the top. This is, what is remnant of that American dream, he’s saying, "I’m going to hit it with a sledgehammer."

AMY GOODMAN: Under Trump’s budget, the Environmental Protection Agency faces a 31 percent cut, the steepest cut of any agency or department across the government. Well, during a press conference on Tuesday, a reporter asked White House budget director Mick Mulvaney about the EPA cuts.

REPORTER: Can you characterize the treatment of climate science programs and cuts to those? And do you–do you describe those as a taxpayer waste, if you do cut them?

MICK MULVANEY: You tell me. I think the National Science Foundation last year used your taxpayer money to fund a climate change musical. Do you think that’s a waste of your money?

REPORTER: What about climate science?

MICK MULVANEY: I’ll take that as a yes, by the way.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s Mick Mulvaney. Joe Stiglitz?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, you know, of course, every government program has the worst thing. The financial sector and the private sector makes a mistake. Remember we had a crisis in 2008? That was a misallocation of trillions of dollars. So, I don’t want to pretend that every program is perfect. But if you get rid of environmental protection, we’re going to be suffering from dirty air, dirty water, toxic waste, that lower our health. And here’s the point. He wants faster economic growth. A less healthy America is not going to be as productive.

AMY GOODMAN: And the massive increase in military spending? I mean, you’ve written books about this, about the wars and what they cost us.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. And we’re fighting, we might say, a war on terrorism. But another aircraft carrier is not going to win—help us in the war on terrorism. You know, the Cold War, that fight with Russia, in the form that it was, ended a quarter-century ago, and yet we’re spending money as if it hasn’t ended. So we’ve been spending lots and lots of money on weapons that don’t work, against enemies that don’t exist. If he used that criteria that he said for shutting down a department, the Defense Department would have been shut down long ago. You know, the $1,000 toilet, the hammers that cost $100 or things like that—if we used the criteria of misspending, the Defense Department is illustration number one.

AMY GOODMAN: So we just have a minute right now. Republicans have joined with Democrats in condemning this, saying that this budget is dead on arrival. He has it released when he’s out of town. What actually happens here? You were a chief economic adviser in a White House, under President Clinton. What happens next? What happens to this budget?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, actually, the House Budget Committee starts putting together their own budget. You know, this will be a little bit in their background. It will give a little bit of impetus to the extremists. You know, it’s so ironic. He’s talking about Islamic extremists while he’s in Saudi Arabia, and here we have budget extremists back home, really extremist. And so, it is giving a license for that kind of extremism in thinking about the social fabric in our country. But they will go ahead on their own and try to structure. The House, led by Ryan, is going to come up with a more extreme budget than I think is going to be acceptable to the American people. Fortunately, the Senate will try to be—tame it in and bring it in. A good chance that they won’t be able to compromise. That is to say, they won’t be able to put together the numbers that work. And what happens then is, the government operates on a continuing resolution, where what you say is, "We haven’t figured out how to make a new budget. We’ll keep the old budget for another three months or six months, until we can reach an agreement."

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, chief economist for Roosevelt Institute, served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, author of numerous books, most recently, The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe.

Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Laugh at Donald Trump’s 100-Day Faceplant

By Jon Schwarz

It’s tough to imagine any two human beings more different than Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
One’s black. One’s white. One writes books. One doesn’t read books and may not be sure what books are. One grew up on the periphery of the U.S. empire and it made him deeply cosmopolitan. One grew up in New York City and it made him a provincial hick.

One has the self-control of a 1,000-year-old Zen monk. One responds to any stimulus like an amoeba. One’s a slender athlete. One’s a fleshy endomorph with whorls and folds in his face like a Shar Pei.
But their elections have one critical thing in common: They both came out of NOWHERE to become president, with characteristics that previously would have throttled their chances before they delivered their first speech in Iowa.

There’s no need to recount everything from Trump’s florid life and campaign that sensible people were sure disqualified him. But we’ve forgotten how the sensible people at first saw Obama in much the same way, and for reasons that went far beyond him being African American. He’d been a senator for just two years when he started running and would have to beat the entire party establishment. His father was Muslim. He wasn’t just not named Henry Smith, his middle name was Hussein. He’d even used cocaine, and openly admitted it.

Yet both Obama and Trump vaulted over everyone and everything into the White House. Tens of millions of Americans were willing to place their lives in the hands of political anomalies whose central pitch was that they would deliver profound change. The rise of Bernie Sanders, who’s proven that you can become the most popular politician in the country without owning a comb, demonstrates the same thing.

What does this mean?

I’d say it means that something has gone incredibly wrong with this country’s political system, that large numbers of us are desperate, and are willing to hand over power to absolutely anyone. That’s brings us to the peculiar reality that it’s not just Obama and Trump’s elections that had something significant in common, it’s likely their presidencies.

Obama said American healthcare was in crisis and that “plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday.” Obama was also outraged by pharmaceutical companies gouging Medicare.

According to Trump, “People all across the country are devastated” by the healthcare system, but if we put him in charge, “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” Trump was also infuriated by Big Pharma and just like Obama vowed to crush them.

Yet Obama delivered a halfway measure that tinkered with the problem, and never went after drug manufacturers. Trump is now poised to give America … literally the same thing.

Obama called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake” in 2008. In 2016 Trump said NAFTA had caused “devastation” and was “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed.” But Obama didn’t renegotiate NAFTA. Trump just announced he’s not going to pull out of it, and it seems clear the odds of any real renegotiation are slim.

Obama attacked Wall Street, and so did Trump. Both then stocked their administrations with bankers.
And Obama and Trump both ran against the Iraq War, and both of their constituencies understood them to mean they would rethink our entire policy toward the Middle East. Both Obama and Trump then faithfully continued the Afghanistan War, bombed Syria, and helped Saudi Arabia starve Yemen.
This doesn’t make Obama and Trump the same, of course. Obama’s policies made life better for many regular people at the edges. Trump’s will unquestionably make them worse — and that’s the best case scenario, in which he doesn’t accidentally terminate human civilization.

But it does mean that on the core issues of politics — the ones about which the one percent/globalists/Bilderbergers/disguised space lizards truly care — Obama did not produce genuine change. And, it now seems more and more likely, neither will Trump.

Given Trump’s atrocious methods and goals, it’s impossible not to take joy in this. “Now that we have vanquished the Dhimmicrats and cuckservatives,” Steve Bannon proclaimed, “we shall —” and then tripped on his shoelaces and fell down 97 flights of stairs.

We can’t enjoy this for long, though. If left unaddressed, the anguish that Americans demonstrated by voting for both Obama and Trump will not evaporate. I once believed there could never be a worse, lazier, more frightening president than Ronald Reagan. Then I was sure of the same thing about George W. Bush. Now I’ve learned my lesson. We have to get busy creating a place for this country’s anger and despair to be used constructively, or it will eventually birth something even worse than Trump.

What happens to an American dream deferred? We lucked out once when it elected Obama. We may survive it electing Trump. But if we keep deferring it, it is absolutely certain that one day it’s going to explode and take the whole world with it.

Trump signs order at the EPA to dismantle environmental protections

By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin


The email arrived at lunchtime Tuesday from a top aide to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. “Our Big Day Today!” read the subject line of the message, which went to thousands of EPA employees.

It detailed how President Trump would be visiting the agency, whose budget he recently proposed cutting by nearly a third, to sign a sweeping executive order aimed at unraveling efforts by President Barack Obama’s administration to combat climate change.

“This is an important moment for EPA,” chief of staff Ryan Jackson wrote. “As the Administrator has mentioned many times, we do not have to choose between environmental protection and economic development.”

Jackson cautioned that there was “limited space” to see Trump sign his order in the EPA’s wood-paneled Map Room. But there was also limited interest from many of the agency’s career employees.

At the EPA, scientists are encountering renewed skepticism of their work, many employees have seen their offices slated for elimination altogether, and regulators are facing the prospect of dismantling environmental rules many of them spent years creating. Trump’s visit to headquarters Tuesday was met with frustration, resignation and varying levels of angst.

“What an insult,” said one longtime employee, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“Needless to say, morale is at rock bottom,” said another, who noted that some employees had worn buttons that read “scientific integrity” in quiet protest.

But elsewhere in the building, the president and members of his Cabinet joined in celebrating a shift in policy direction with representatives from several energy industries that had been on the losing end of the previous administration’s policies.

Trump showed up at 2 p.m. as scheduled, surrounded by coal miners and coal executives, as well as Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Vice President Pence.

“Today, we’re taking a great step in breaking the restraints that have become burdens,” said Perry.

“We’re not going to allow regulations here at the EPA to pick winners and losers,” Pruitt promised.
The president, who devoted much of his remarks to praising coal miners, pipelines and U.S. manufacturing, declared, “We’re ending the theft of American prosperity and rebuilding our beloved country.”

[How Sen. Inhofe is making his mark on Trump’s energy and environment agenda]

 

The far-reaching order he unveiled Tuesday instructs federal regulators to rewrite key Obama-era rules curbing U.S. carbon emissions — namely the Clean Power Plan, which was intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s electric plants. It also seeks to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and remove the requirement that federal officials consider the impact of climate change when making decisions.

In sum, it amounts to a wholesale rebuke of Obama’s environmental efforts.

Several of the measures could take years to implement and are unlikely to change broader economic trends that are pushing the nation toward cleaner sources of energy than coal. But the order sent an unmistakable message about the direction in which Trump wants to take the country — toward unfettered oil and gas production, with an apathetic eye to worries over global warming.
Reactions to the new order came swiftly.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America’s president and chief executive, Barry Russell, who was at the event, said in a statement that his group welcomed Trump’s “bold decision to tackle the growing regulatory state and identify rules that harm the economy and threaten American jobs.”

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association chief executive Jim Matheson, who also attended and whose group challenged the Clean Power Plan in federal court, said in an interview that he does not anticipate that many of his members will start building new coal-fired plants. But for those who already have invested heavily in keeping their coal plants operating, he said, “It has given them much greater flexibility to maintain more reasonably priced and affordable power for our consumers.”

Meanwhile, former Obama administration officials expressed outrage.

“President Trump’s executive order to roll back vital climate and clean air protections this afternoon is the most brazen and transparent assault on the health of Americans in my lifetime,” said Heather Zichal, former deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change.

Lisa P. Jackson, who headed the EPA during Obama’s first term and is now Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, said in a statement that “limiting climate protections threatens the certainty businesses need to continue to innovate.”

And several governors said that they would press ahead with their own plans to cut carbon emissions.
Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) noted in an interview that he had spent part of Tuesday in Snohomish County, heralding the “biggest battery in the world to integrate solar and wind into the grid,” whose development was underwritten in part by state taxpayers.

And California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said in an interview that he, like Inslee, was prepared to take the new administration to court over its regulatory rewrite. “Gutting the Clean Power Plan is a colossal mistake and defies science itself,” he said. “Erasing climate change may take place in Donald Trump’s mind, but nowhere else.”

Outside the EPA on Tuesday afternoon, protesters shouted and waved signs, biding their time for a larger protest later in the day outside the White House. Inside, some employees watched the president’s remarks on YouTube, while others went for a walk. In the Map Room, Trump sat at a small table and scribbled his signature on the order.

“Come on, fellas. Basically, you know what this is?” Trump said to the coal miners gathered around him. “You know what it says, right? You’re going back to work.”

Can Merkel Bring Trump to Reason?

Angela Merkel is planning a dual strategy for her first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday. She wants to foster close personal relations with the new U.S. president, but she also wants to make clear the Berlin is armed for a trade war against Washington. By SPIEGEL Staff

The world already knows how Angela Merkel feels about Silvio Berlusconi. The former Italian prime minister allegedly sought pleasure with underage prostitutes, he wasn't particularly fastidious about the rule of law and he sought to grin away his country's problems. Italian newspapers also reported a few years ago that he made some rather untoward remarks about the German chancellor's posterior in a telephone conversation. Berlusconi was precisely the kind of politician Merkel abhors.


Nevertheless, she usually got what she wanted from him. At an EU summit in December 2008, she deployed a mix of charm and toughness to secure his agreement on her climate policies. It was a fabled event, and diplomats still tell stories today about how she wrapped the vain Italian leader around her little finger.

Merkel's people are hoping for some similar magic at an upcoming encounter that will be even more sensitive. On Tuesday, she will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. It will be the first in-person meeting between the two since the U.S. election in November. And it could be the most difficult meeting Merkel has ever faced as chancellor.

The two couldn't be more different. On the one side is an unsophisticated yet self-absorbed political neophyte who has made it clear that there is nothing he won't sacrifice to achieve what he sees as America's interests. On the other is one of the most experienced leaders in the world, one who many see as being the last defender of democracy and Western values -- a view that Merkel herself considers to be a dangerous misjudgment given the limits of German power. Indeed, she calls it "absurd."

The task at hand could hardly be more important. Trump is not only the most powerful man in the world. He has also shown that he cares nothing about the rules of Western political game. His plans could rupture the European Union and weaken Germany economically.

Trump has announced that he plans to fight Germany's export surplus. And although his statements on NATO have been contradictory, it is clear that he wants alliance partners to increase their defense spending. Plans for his foreign policy with Russia are also half-baked. Will he back the Western sanctions against Moscow that Merkel worked hard to implement? Merkel and Trump will have no lack of issues to discuss.

Merkel Will Seek Good Relations
 
But sources close to Merkel are certain about one thing: The chancellor will seek to establish a good relationship with the president. Trump relies less on the traditional mechanism of politics than his predecessors and he often makes decisions impulsively, without regard to well-established procedures.

"Trump's actions are driven more by his instincts and business experience than by political rationality," says Norbert Röttgen, the foreign policy spokesman for Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He traveled to Washington a few weeks ago for talks. "That doesn't make dealing with him any easier."

Merkel doesn't want to rely on a charm offensive alone. She's also prepared to stand her ground on some issues, especially trade policy. The chancellor will be accompanied on her trip by Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser and BMW head Harald Krüger according to an agreement she reached with US Vice President Mike Pence at the Munich Security Conference in February.

Kaeser and Krüger are to explain to Trump how many jobs and training positions their companies create in the United States. The president has greater trust in executives than politicians and Merkel is hoping that Trump will listen to the heads of two blue chip Germany companies.

Cautious Optimism
 
In terms of foreign policy, Merkel is said to be less pessimistic than she had been right after Trump's election. Thus far, the president hasn't moved to implement his most radical demands. The nuclear deal with Iran is still in place and the idea of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been delayed for now.

The clarity with which U.S. representatives at the Munich Security Conference in February expressed their support for NATO also calmed some of the worst fears. Officials in Berlin believe that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will lean much more toward pragmatic realpolitik than initially feared.

In addition, Trump's new National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster is regarded in Berlin as being much more calculable and well-informed than his addled predecessor Michael Flynn, who was forced to step down because of his misrepresentation of contacts he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States prior to the election.

During a video call with McMaster, Merkel's foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen's impression was of a man firmly rooted in traditional Republican foreign policy and that McMaster is someone Germany can work well with.

Merkel has been studying Trump from afar. She has watched his speeches and she is certain that he intends to do what he can to fulfill his promises. She is also convinced that direct contact with Trump is vital, something she realized during an extensive phone call she had with him on Jan. 28, during which she explained the Ukraine conflict to the new president.

A Shift on Russia
 
That Saturday afternoon, the president telephoned first with Merkel and afterward with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Officials in the Chancellery believed that the Americans had arranged the sequence intentionally so that Trump, a Putin admirer who has spoken out in favor of a new deal with the Kremlin, could first get an introduction to Russian policy from Merkel. It appears that less Moscow-friendly actors in Washington hoped that the strategy might help prevent Trump from getting too close to Putin.

The plan seems to have worked. Since then, hope has been mounting in Berlin that Washington, even under Trump, will continue to back the Minsk peace process and that it will not move unilaterally to lift sanctions. Merkel also sees it as a good sign that Fiona Hill, a recognized expert on Russia who is also a sharp critic of Putin, was appointed to the National Security Council.

Merkel is hoping to see the same kind of shift on a host of other issues important to the international community, including the Iran deal, the situation in Libya and climate change.

She also plans to explain the tenets of the European Union to the president. Officials in Berlin say that a person who found it surprising after the election that the promises he made about U.S. health care policy would be difficult to implement may have some catching up to do on other issues as well.
The trick will be finding the right tone -- to teach without sounding pedantic. "We have to fight for the trans-Atlantic relationship by proposing projects that will lead to mutual success," says Röttgen. That is Merkel's view as well. She is likely to point out to Trump, for example, that Germany has already begun implementing the U.S. president's demand for increased military spending.

A Great Threat to the Global Economy
 
Even though there is cautious optimism in the Chancellery about foreign policy, Merkel and her staff are preparing for the worst when it comes to trade. Even as vague as they may still be, Trump's plans could become the greatest threat to the global economy since the financial crisis, with Germany standing directly in the firing line.

Almost 50 percent of all jobs in Germany are dependent on exports. The Americans alone last year purchased 107 billion euros worth of German goods, whereas only 57 billion worth of U.S. goods got imported to Germany. The country would suffer severely if the U.S. started a trade war with Europe or China.

In order to assuage Trump, Merkel is deploying a dual strategy. In addition to her charm offensive, she also wants to send the message that, if push comes to shove, she has a nastier side as well.
On the one hand, Merkel wants to emphasize in the meeting the significant degree to which the Americans also benefit from good trans-Atlantic relations. German Economics Minister Brigitte Zypries put together a package of data for the chancellor following a meeting with trade associations last week. It shows that one-third of German foreign investment flows into the United States. It also shows that German car companies now manufacture more automobiles in the country than they export to it from Germany.

But what happens in the likely event that Trump sticks to his "America First" plans? If that happens, then Merkel is expected to push for a united EU front to blockade Washington. At a summit in Brussels on Thursday, Merkel noted, "We renewed our support for free trade."

Europe To Brace for Trade War
 
A few days earlier, European trade ministers met for a working lunch in Brussels and agreed to a joint position. The agreed that the EU should not fuel the conflict, but it should prepare for the possibility of a trade war with the United States.

The goal, in such a case, would be that of isolating the U.S. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström was asked to begin negotiating further agreements with other countries and regions of the world. She is currently touring the Far East in order to expedite current talks on trade agreements with Japan, India and Australia. At the same the, the EU countries are pushing ahead with their plans for public courts that would arbitrate conflicts relating to controversial investment projects. It's an initiative that the Trump administration wants to put a stop to at all costs.

Trump's trade policy adviser Peter Navarro has been the most outspoken about calling Germany the enemy. The Harvard graduate views it as a "serious issue. Germany is one of the most difficult trade deficits that we're going to have to deal with but we're thinking long and hard about that." He has also accused EU politicians of deliberately devaluing the euro to give European exporters a price advantage over their American competitors.

Even before Trump's election, Navarro had been considered an outsider with his views. Now he's the president's chief ideologist on trade. Many of Trump's allies are pushing for a radical tax policy measure to stop the stream of goods from abroad, a measure referred to in official jargon as a border adjustment tax -- a plan whereby exports would be exempt from taxes but companies would not be able to deduct money they spend on imports.. "We are taking this very seriously," says one high-ranking source in the Chancellery.

On her first visit with Trump, Merkel plans to be very open about her views on the tax plans. Her preparatory paper for the meeting states that she plans to call the punitive import measure a "protective tariff" and the tax relief for American exports a "export subsidy." She views both as being hostile acts that could trigger a trade war.

Merkel also plans to note that a levy like that would violate the pre-existing tax agreement between Germany and the U.S. They would also be out of compliance with World Trade Organization rules. The implicit threat is that Germany would not shy away from lodging a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

How Germany Could Strike Back
 
If none of that bears fruit, the Chancellery has begun reviewing ways it could strike back at the U.S. One idea would be to incrementally increase duties on American imports. Agreements reached within the World Trade Organization framework provide enough maneuvering room to allow for that. Another possibility would be to allow German companies to write off the U.S. import tax on their German tax declarations, thus compensating them for their competitive disadvantage.

Ultimately, Germany could also take a bigger step: lowering corporate taxes and the amount of social contributions employers are required to pay here. Both would make Germany more attractive to international corporations, but they would also cost tax payers billions of euros -- initially at least.
As the defenses are mounted against Trump, Merkel is counting on the European Commission, which recently said it wants to significantly bolster its arsenal for potential trade wars. Last November, the EU executive paved the way for improving its defense instruments, which it had originally planned to deploy against China.

But they might also help bring Trump to reason if they are approved by the European Council, the powerful body comprised of leaders of the EU member states, and the European Parliament. Furthermore, the EU has long been investigating Google for competition violations and other companies such as McDonald's and Starbucks for tax-evasion models. If need be, those investigations could be broadened at any time.

Merkel is hoping things won't get that bad. Her trip would already be considered a success if she were able to find a reasonable basis for discussion with the U.S. president. At the same time, Merkel is up for re-election in September and she will also have to keep voters in Germany in mind. She can't alienate the new president, but it also wouldn't play well domestically if she allowed herself to be treated as a supplicant the way British Prime Minister Theresa May recently did during her visit with Trump.

The fact that a discussion in the Chancellery is even necessary regarding how far the chancellor can go in her criticism of Trump's violations of Western values and principles is in itself indicative how the situation has changed. In the past, these were the kinds of considerations that Merkel's staff made prior to trips to Russia or China. Now it's the government in Washington, once one of Germany's closest partners, that worries the government in Berlin. "In terms of international policy," Merkel adviser Röttgen says, the U.S. has now become an "element of uncertainty of a structural nature."

Pursuit of shady oligarch a test of DoJ integrity under Trump

Can It Happen Here?

This is a clear moment of crisis for Americans, says Atlantic senior editor David Frum. “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States in decades,” he explains in this video. What can people do when Congress refuses to check the president, civil unrest fuels his agenda, and he uses Twitter to stifle dissent? Read more in The Atlantic’s March 2017 cover story, “How to Build an Autocracy.”

Authors: Daniel Lombroso, David Frum

The Silence of the Hacks

By Paul Krugman

The story so far: A foreign dictator intervened on behalf of a U.S. presidential candidate — and that candidate won. Close associates of the new president were in contact with the dictator’s espionage officials during the campaign, and his national security adviser was forced out over improper calls to that country’s ambassador — but not until the press reported it; the president learned about his actions weeks earlier, but took no action.

Meanwhile, the president seems oddly solicitous of the dictator’s interests, and rumors swirl about his personal financial connections to the country in question. Is there anything to those rumors? Nobody knows, in part because the president refuses to release his tax returns.

Maybe there’s nothing wrong here, and it’s all perfectly innocent. But if it’s not innocent, it’s very bad indeed. So what do Republicans in Congress, who have the power to investigate the situation, believe should be done?

Nothing.

Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, says that Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador were “entirely appropriate.”

Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, angrily dismissed calls for a select committee to investigate contacts during the campaign: “There is absolutely not going to be one.”

Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House oversight committee — who hounded Hillary Clinton endlessly over Benghazi — declared that the “situation has taken care of itself.”

Just the other day Republicans were hot in pursuit of potential scandal, and posed as ultrapatriots. Now they’re indifferent to actual subversion and the real possibility that we are being governed by people who take their cues from Moscow. Why?

Well, Senator Rand Paul explained it all: “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.” Does anyone doubt that he was speaking for his whole party?

The point is that you can’t understand the mess we’re in without appreciating not just the potential corruption of the president, but the unmistakable corruption of his party — a party so intent on cutting taxes for the wealthy, deregulating banks and polluters and dismantling social programs that accepting foreign subversion is, apparently, a small price to pay.

Put it this way: I’ve been seeing comparisons between the emerging information on the Trump-Putin connection and the Watergate affair, which brought down a previous president. But while the potential scandal here is far worse than Watergate — Richard Nixon was sinister and scary, but nobody imagined that he might be taking instructions from a foreign power — it’s very hard to imagine today’s Republicans standing up for the Constitution the way their predecessors did.

 

It’s not simply that these days there are more moral midgets in Congress, although that, too. 

Watergate took place before Republicans began their long march to the political right, so Congress was far less polarized than it is now. There was widespread agreement between the parties on basic economic ideas, and a fair amount of ideological crossover; this meant that Republicans didn’t worry so much that holding a lawless president accountable would derail their hard-line agenda.

The polarization of the electorate also undermines Congress’s role as a check on the president: Most Republicans are in safe districts, where their main fear is of primary challengers to their right. And the Republican base has suddenly become remarkably pro-Russian. Funny how that works.

So how does this crisis end?

It’s not a constitutional crisis — yet. But Donald Trump is facing a clear crisis of legitimacy. His popular-vote-losing win was already suspect given the F.B.I.’s last-minute intervention on his behalf. Now we know that even as the F.B.I. was creating the false appearance of scandal around his opponent, it was sitting on evidence suggesting alarmingly close relations between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. And nothing he has done since the inauguration allays fears that he is in effect a Putin puppet.

How can a leader under such a cloud send American soldiers to die? How can he be granted the right to shape the Supreme Court for a generation?

Again, a thorough, nonpartisan, unrestricted investigation could conceivably clear the air. But Republicans in Congress, who have the power to make such an investigation happen, are dead set against it.

The thing is, this nightmare could be ended by a handful of Republican legislators willing to make common cause with Democrats to demand the truth. And maybe there are enough people of conscience left in the G.O.P.

But there probably aren’t. And that’s a problem that’s even scarier than the Trump-Putin axis.

The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies

By Glenn Greenwald

President Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, was forced to resign on Monday night as a result of getting caught lying about whether he discussed sanctions in a December telephone call with a Russian diplomat. The only reason the public learned about Flynn’s lie is because someone inside the U.S. government violated the criminal law by leaking the contents of Flynn’s intercepted communications.

In the spectrum of crimes involving the leaking of classified information, publicly revealing the contents of SIGINT — signals intelligence — is one of the most serious felonies. Journalists (and all other nongovernmental citizens) can be prosecuted under federal law for disclosing classified information only under the narrowest circumstances; reflecting how serious SIGINT is considered to be, one of those circumstances includes leaking the contents of intercepted communications, as defined this way by 18 § 798 of the U.S. Code:

Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates … or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes … any classified information … obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

That Flynn lied about what he said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was first revealed by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who has built his career on repeating what his CIA sources tell him. In his January 12 column, Ignatius wrote: “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”

That “senior U.S. government official” committed a serious felony by leaking to Ignatius the communication activities of Flynn. Similar and even more extreme crimes were committed by what the Washington Post called “nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls,” who told the paper for its February 9 article that “Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials.” The New York Times, also citing anonymous U.S. officials, provided even more details about the contents of Flynn’s telephone calls.

That all of these officials committed major crimes can hardly be disputed. In January, CNN reported that Flynn’s calls with the Russians “were captured by routine U.S. eavesdropping targeting the Russian diplomats.” That means that the contents of those calls were “obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of [a] foreign government,” which in turn means that anyone who discloses them — or reports them to the public — is guilty of a felony under the statute.

Yet very few people are calling for a criminal investigation or the prosecution of these leakers, nor demanding the leakers step forward and “face the music” — for very good reason: The officials leaking this information acted justifiably, despite the fact that they violated the law. That’s because the leaks revealed that a high government official, Gen. Flynn, blatantly lied to the public about a material matter — his conversations with Russian diplomats — and the public has the absolute right to know this.

This episode underscores a critical point: The mere fact that an act is illegal does not mean it is unjust or even deserving of punishment. Oftentimes, the most just acts are precisely the ones that the law prohibits.

That’s particularly true of whistleblowers — i.e., those who reveal information the law makes it a crime to reveal, when doing so is the only way to demonstrate to the public that powerful officials are acting wrongfully or deceitfully. In those cases, we should cheer those who do it even though they are undertaking exactly those actions that the criminal law prohibits.

This Flynn episode underscores another critical point: The motives of leakers are irrelevant. It’s very possible — indeed, likely — that the leakers here were not acting with benevolent motives. Nobody with a straight face can claim that lying to the public is regarded in official Washington as some sort of mortal sin; if anything, the contrary is true: It’s seen as a job requirement.

Moreover, Gen. Flynn has many enemies throughout the intelligence and defense community. The same is true, of course, of Donald Trump; recall that just a few weeks ago, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Trump that he was being “really dumb” to criticize the intelligence community because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

It’s very possible — I’d say likely — that the motive here was vindictive rather than noble. Whatever else is true, this is a case where the intelligence community, through strategic (and illegal) leaks, destroyed one of its primary adversaries in the Trump White House.

But no matter. What matters is not the motive of the leaker but the effects of the leak. Any leak that results in the exposure of high-level wrongdoing — as this one did — should be praised, not scorned and punished.

It is, of course, bizarre to watch this principle now so widely celebrated. Over the last eight years, President Obama implemented the most vindictive and aggressive war on whistleblowers in all of U.S. history. As Leonard Downie, one of the editors at the Washington Post during the Watergate investigation, put it in a special report: “The [Obama] administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”

It’s hard to put into words how strange it is to watch the very same people — from both parties, across the ideological spectrum — who called for the heads of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, and so many other Obama-era leakers today heap praise on those who leaked the highly sensitive, classified SIGINT information that brought down Gen. Flynn.

It’s even more surreal to watch Democrats act as though lying to the public is some grave firing offense when President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, got caught red-handed not only lying to the public but also to Congress — about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. And despite the fact that lying to Congress is a felony, he kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.

But this is how political power and the addled partisan brain in D.C. functions. Those in power always regard leaks as a heinous crime, while those out of power regard them as a noble act. They seamlessly shift sides as their position in D.C. changes.

Indeed, while Democrats have suddenly re-discovered the virtues of illegal leaking, Trump-supporting Republicans are insisting that the only thing that matters is rooting out the criminal leakers. Fox News host Steve Doocey and right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham today both demanded to know why the leakers weren’t being hunted, while congressional Republicans are vowing investigations to find the leakers. And Trump himself today — echoing Obama-era Democrats — said that “the real story” isn’t the lies told by his national security adviser but rather the fact that someone leaked information exposing them:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?

10:28 PM - 14 Feb 2017

But this is just the tawdry, craven game of Washington. People with no actual beliefs shamelessly take diametrically opposite views on fundamental political questions based exclusively on whether it helps or hurts their leaders. Thus, the very same Democrats who just three months ago viewed illegal leaking as a grave sin today view it as an act of heroic #Resistance.

What matters far more than this lowly and empty game-playing is the principle that is so vividly apparent here. Given the extreme secrecy powers that have arisen under the war on terror, one of the very few ways that the public has left for learning about what its government officials do is illegal leaking. As Trevor Timm notes, numerous leaks have already achieved great good in the three short weeks that Trump has been president.

Leaks are illegal and hated by those in power (and their followers) precisely because political officials want to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing, and want to be able to lie to the public with impunity and without detection. That’s the same reason the rest of us should celebrate such illegal leaks and protect those who undertake them, often at great risk to their own interests, so that we can be informed about the real actions of those who wield the greatest power. That principle does not change based upon which political party controls the White House.

* * * * *
From the creation of The Intercept during the Obama presidency through to today under Trump, a central principle of The Intercept — a key reason it was created — was to enable whistleblowing and report on leaks in the public interest. As our pinned article on our front page says: “If You See Something, Leak Something,” with instructions on how to do that as safely as possible.

As Tensions Rise, Steve Bannon and ISIS Get Closer to Their Common Goal: Civilizational War

By Murtaza Hussain

The Trump administration has taken sweeping, drastic measures that it says are necessary to protect Americans from the threat of terrorism, including its executive order halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. But the radical policies and beliefs of this administration could just as easily end up fueling the narratives of extremist groups fighting the United States. When Trump ran a campaign built on promises to destroy ISIS, how can one explain the fact that supporters of the group in Mosul were reportedly celebrating his Muslim ban?

The order was based on plainly dubious claims about national security, targeting for scrutiny some of the most heavily vetted visitors to the United States. But the tangible purpose it did serve, before being at least temporarily frozen by the courts, was to divide Americans from millions of people in the Muslim world by sending the latter a message of gratuitous insult and contempt — and emboldening the very extremist movements the order was ostensibly directed against.

That kind of polarization may be exactly what some members of the White House want.

High-ranking members of the current administration — most notably its chief strategist, Steve Bannon — have publicly espoused apocalyptic theories of history that center on a forthcoming clash between Western countries and the Muslim world, a conflict that many of them seem to perceive as both inevitable and desirable.

There are striking parallels between Bannon’s worldview and the perspective of terrorist groups like the Islamic State, which see the world divided in similarly binary terms — hence their reported enthusiasm for the executive order that Bannon helped author.

A proponent of pseudoscientific theories of history like the “Fourth Turning,” Bannon has predicted the coming of another major U.S. war in the Middle East and a military conflict with what he calls an “expansionist China.” In interviews during the election campaign, Bannon openly described Trump as a “blunt instrument” for his ideological goals.

A 2014 speech that Bannon delivered to an audience at the Vatican provides a hint of what kind of program he might want to use Trump to achieve. In that address, delivered via teleconference, Bannon called for a revival of the tradition of the “church militant,” describing a vague yet apocalyptic threat he claims that Western countries face from both “Islamic jihadist fascism” and their own loss of religious faith.

We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict … to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.

Now consider how Bannon’s hysterical view of history was echoed that same year in a speech by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who issued a similarly vague, yet no less frenzied call to arms:

So let the world know that we are living today in a new era. Whoever was heedless must now be alert. Whoever was sleeping must now awaken. … You will face tribulation and fierce battle. … So prepare your arms, and supply yourselves with piety.

Nowhere are these types of ideas particularly popular. While the Islamic State is held up by anti-Muslim activists in the United States as the quintessential expression of Muslim beliefs, in reality the group is deeply loathed in Muslim-majority countries. In the United States, though Trump won the election, his voter base comprised a distinct minority of the electorate. Even among those who did vote for him, few appear to have done so in enthusiasm for the apocalyptic theories of history held by advisers like Bannon. Huge numbers of people have also taken to the streets in opposition to Trump’s executive orders, which has helped to counteract the administration’s anti-Muslim message to the world, showing that it does not represent the views of all Americans.
But it doesn’t take much for a highly motivated minority to spark a broader conflict.

ISIS attacks have been deliberately calibrated to shock and offend the sensibilities of Western publics, a strategy that the group openly refers to as “eliminating the grayzone” of coexistence between societies. Many 19th- and 20th-century revolutionary movements were also led by small, militant vanguards that used violence and provocation to help advance their political programs. In their time, these movements achieved real tactical successes. And even today, despite widespread public war-weariness in the United States, ISIS has accomplished its goal of dragging American troops back into armed conflicts in Iraq and Syria that show little sign of abating.

After a series of improbable successes, the radical right-wing vanguard of U.S. politics has now taken control of the government, along with the most powerful military on the planet. In its enthusiasm for civilizational war, it is just the enemy that a group like the Islamic State needs to help validate its desperate and fanatical narrative.

An early example of the kind of harm that the Trump administration can do came in the form of the first special operations forces raid authorized by Trump after his inauguration. In that operation — reportedly promoted to him over dinner with his advisers — a total of 25 civilians were reportedly killed, including nine children under the age of 13. Among those killed was an 8-year-old U.S.

citizen, Nawar al-Awlaki, the daughter of deceased al Qaeda proselytizer Anwar al-Awlaki. Images of Awlaki’s daughter and other victims of the raid were broadcast around the world, fueling widespread outrage.

Days later, the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda publicly denounced Trump for carrying out a “massacre” of civilians. The group promised vengeance, saying that global outrage over the deaths meant that “the flame of jihad has ignited and reached all over the world.”

While that may be an overstatement, it is not hard to see how a cycle of tit-for-tat violence, already tacitly established since the start of the war on terror, could accelerate dramatically under an administration that actively seeks to escalate conflict. Where President Obama sought to calm public fears in the aftermath of ISIS attacks, Trump and his administration will undoubtedly seek to inflame them for political gain. It’s only a matter of time before such an attack occurs, and Trump’s reaction could have consequences that quickly spiral out of control.

In his memoirs, published after his suicide in 1942, the exiled Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig described his feelings of despair upon realizing that a “tiny but loud-mouthed party of German Nationalists” had succeeded in seizing power and dragging humanity into a global conflict it had neither wanted or expected. “The personal cause to which I had lent the force of my convictions, the peaceful union of Europe, had been wrecked,” Zweig lamented. “What I feared more than my own death, war waged by everyone against everyone else, had been unleashed for the second time.”

Seven decades after Zweig penned these words, small, well-organized groups of right-wing radicals are once again ascendant across the world. The best hope to stop them may be the popular opposition movements that have begun to stir in the United States. But most importantly, it will take a rejection of the logic of revenge and collective blame on both sides to prevent the apocalyptic visions of extremists from becoming reality.