Trump Unbound

From a NYTIMES email:

President
Trump breaks so many of the normal rules of politics that it can
sometimes be hard to know when his tweets and comments are truly
newsworthy. Even by his standards, though, the past several days have
stood out. Consider:

Trump said on Monday that a plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” wearing “dark uniforms” had been headed to the Republican National Convention to do “big damage.” The claim is similar to a baseless conspiracy theory that spread online over the summer, well before the convention. He has declined to condemn the killings of two protesters in Kenosha, Wis. He instead defended the 17-year-old charged in the shootings — a Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse — saying he was acting in self-defense. Trump also promoted a Twitter post that called Rittenhouse “a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.” He defended violence committed by his supporters in Portland, Ore., who fired paintballs and pepper spray at Black Lives Matter protesters. He compared the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha to missing “a three-foot putt” in a golf tournament. He claimed that “people that you’ve never heard of” and “people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Joe Biden. He claimed Democrats were trying to “destroy” suburbs with “low-income housing, and with that comes a lot of other problems, including crime.” He added that Cory Booker — one of the highest-profile Black Democrats — would be “in charge of it.” He predicted that the stock market would crash if Biden won. He said that Biden, at the Democratic National Convention, “didn’t even discuss law enforcement, the police. Those words weren’t mentioned.” In fact, Biden held a discussion at the convention on policing, with a police chief. Trump claimed that he “took control of” the situation in Kenosha by sending in the National Guard. In fact, Wisconsin’s governor, not the president, sent the National Guard. He retweeted messages asserting that the pandemic’s death toll was overstated. Evidence indicates the opposite is true. He said that protests against police brutality were actually a secret “coup attempt” by anarchists “trying to take down the President.”

Biden has taken a very different approach to the unrest in Kenosha, Portland and elsewhere. He has told no apparent untruths, and he has criticized violence from both the political left and right — even though many liberals, whose votes Biden needs, are uncomfortable with any criticism of people on their side of the debate.

G.O.P. reaction. The Times tried to reach about a dozen leading congressional Republicans and ask for their reaction to Trump’s claims. “None cared to comment,” Mark Leibovich writes. Senator Mitt Romney offered one of the few public responses, calling the president’s comments “simply jaw-dropping.”

Russia adds to the misinformation. A group backed by the Kremlin is again trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election and push voters toward Trump, Facebook and Twitter said yesterday.

No Evidence to Support Biden Smear

Even one of the chief media whores at the NYTIMES was forced to admit there is no evidence to support the right wing smear of Biden.

"There is no evidence that Mr. Biden intentionally tried to help his son when he pushed for the dismissal of the Ukrainian prosecutor, who was widely seen in the West as corrupt." - Michael Crowley and Kenneth P. Vogel

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/us/politics/trump-whistleblower-complaint.html

Track Trump Investigations

The New York Times offers and interactive site detailing the dozens of investigations of Trump and his associates.

Tracking 29 Investigations
Related to Trump

By LARRY BUCHANAN and

KAREN YOURISH

MAY 13, 2019

 

Federal, state and congressional authorities are
scrutinizing many aspects of Donald J. Trump’s life through
investigations related to his businesses, campaign, inauguration and
presidency. We’ll be tracking them here. According to reporting by The
New York Times, there are currently at least:

10

Federal Criminal Investigations

8

State and Local Investigations

11

Congressional Investigations

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/13/us/politics/trump-investigations.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Today's Times Opinions

David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist First, the idea of eliminating all $1.4 trillion of outstanding student debt is getting some attention in progressive circles. At first blush, it sounds like a bold proposal to reduce economic inequality. But it’s not, and I devote my column this morning to explaining why. Canceling all student debt would actually be a giant handout to the upper middle class. There are far better ways to help those young adults who really are struggling to repay their student loans. Related: Michael Bloomberg has become a leading advocate of more financial aid, and in a new Times Op-Ed, he explains why he has just made what may be the largest donation to a university — $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins, his alma mater. Illegitimate elections? Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia, has refused to call her opponent’s victory legitimate. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey have gone further, using a version of “stolen” to describe the Georgia governor’s race. Many conservatives are arguing that these statements are no different from the recent accusations of vote-counting fraud made by President Trump, Marco Rubio and others. I disagree. Trump, Rubio and others did something much worse: They alleged fraud where none existed and tried to discredit legitimate processes for counting votes. Abrams, Brown and Booker, by contrast, criticized blatantly undemocratic behavior: the attempts by Republicans in Georgia (and elsewhere) to win elections by making it hard for many people, especially African-Americans, to vote. I’m glad that Abrams used her concession message this weekend to call out the undemocratic behavior of her opponent, Brian Kemp. It may well have been the difference between defeat and victory. And yet I also have a problem with the specific words that Brown, Booker and, to a lesser extent, Abrams used. I recognize many readers may disagree with me here, but I think that reaching for the most aggressive plausible rhetoric isn’t the ideal move after a close election. As Josh Douglas of the University of Kentucky tweeted, “We must fight back against voter suppression, but our democracy depends on loser recognizing legitimacy of winner.” Ronald Klain, a former top aide to Al Gore, notes that he pointedly did not use such words to describe his 2000 loss. In Slate, the legal scholar Richard Hasen lays out three objections: One, the approach of Abrams and others “feeds a growing cycle of mistrust and delegitimization of the election process;” two, it remains unproven whether voter suppression was the difference in the election; and three, it focuses attention on “the wrong question” — the magnitude of the effect of suppression, rather than the basic injustice of it. Regardless of your views on this issue, I encourage you to read Ari Berman’s documentation in Mother Jones of the many ways that Kemp tried to prevent his fellow Georgians from voting. It’s truly shameful behavior. In The Times. Michelle Cottle argues that Nancy Pelosi’s struggle to reclaim the speaker of the House post is healthy for the Democratic Party. My view is that Democrats would be making a mistake to end the process by choosing anyone other than Pelosi — the most effective speaker in decades.

Why America Needs to Hear Brett Kavanaugh’s Accuser

The Senate is right to reopen hearings on his Supreme Court confirmation after Christine Blasey Ford’s claim of sexual assault.



https://tinyurl.com/yc49j4yq



By The Editorial Board - Sept. 17, 2018



The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.





What happened between two teenagers at a suburban Maryland house party on a night more than three decades ago? Since one of them has been identified by the other as Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge who is now up for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, the Senate correctly decided to hear from Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser next week before proceeding with his confirmation.



The accusations are detailed and appalling. Christine Blasey Ford, now a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, says she was 15 years old on the night in question when a “highly inebriated” Brett Kavanaugh, then 17, pushed her into a bedroom, locked the door and turned on loud music to mask her cries for help. She says he climbed on top of her, held a hand over her mouth and tried to take her clothes off. “I feared he may inadvertently kill me,” Dr. Blasey wrote in a July letter for her congresswoman to pass along to Senator Dianne Feinstein.



Judge Kavanaugh has flatly denied any wrongdoing. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time,” he said in a statement.



This is the sort of denial that an innocent man would offer. It is also increasingly the modus operandi in the age of Donald Trump, regardless of the accusations at hand: Don’t engage with the specifics, just deny, deny, deny.



This game plan flows directly from the top, where President Trump has consistently met a growing list of allegations of sexual misconduct with combative denials. At last count, more than 15 women have claimed to have been harassed or abused by Mr. Trump in the years before his presidency. He has attacked some of his accusers individually. Some he has claimed never to have met. But he maintains that they are all, without exception, liars.



In contrast, consider the response of Judge Kavanaugh’s friend and high-school classmate Mark Judge, whom Dr. Blasey identified as the other person in the room with her and Judge Kavanaugh. “I have no recollection of that,” Mr. Judge told The New Yorker in a story published on Friday — which sounds reasonable coming from someone who wrote a memoir, “Wasted,” about his struggles with teenage alcoholism. (The memoir includes a character, “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who is also described as drinking to excess.) Mr. Judge later changed his answer to a straight-up denial, only to return to the no-recollection line on Sunday.



As in the case of so many he-said/she-said scenarios, there’s much we don’t know and probably never will with certainty. But there are two things we do know.



First, there is no upside for women who come forward with stories of sexual harassment or assault, especially when the accused is a famous or powerful man. It doesn’t matter how credible the story is. Simply by telling it, a woman can expect to be pilloried in the press and suffer far worse on social media, if not in real life.



Dr. Blasey, who initially asked Ms. Feinstein to keep her identity confidential, told The Washington Post that the alleged attack changed her life for years and contributed to long-term anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew that putting her name to the allegations — which she felt forced to do after news of her letter was reported last week — would change her life again, and not for the better.



Judge Kavanaugh’s defenders have already launched a fusillade of victim-blaming counterattacks, from the predictable to the preposterous:



She’s making it up. (If so, she doesn’t fit the profile of a false accuser.)



The charge is too old, and anyway, why didn’t she report the assault immediately after it happened? (More likely a girl in the early 1980s would have blamed herself than report it.)



This is a coordinated hit job by Senate Democrats desperate to stop Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. (If so, Ms. Feinstein didn’t get the memo. She had the letter for more than a month and didn’t notify her colleagues of it until last week.)



If it’s not a partisan plot then how do you explain Dr. Blasey’s political donations? (From 2014 to 2017, she gave $72 to Democratic candidates and committees.)



Judge Kavanaugh’s mother, also a judge, once oversaw a home-foreclosure case involving Dr. Blasey’s parents. (Misleading.)



Dr. Blasey is behaving like a schoolgirl who’s upset that a boy in her class made a pass at her. (This one came from that paragon of decency, Donald Trump Jr.)



If anyone is still wondering why women don’t speak up about sexual assault sooner, or at all, you have your answer.



The second thing we know is that, while Dr. Blasey has not given the public any reason to doubt her credibility, the same can’t be said of Judge Kavanaugh, who has given misleading or inaccurate testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over the years. Is he telling the truth now when he says nothing happened?



The bottom line is that Brett Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land, and there is now a credible accusation of sexual assault against him.



The next steps are for the F.B.I. to interview Judge Kavanaugh, Dr. Blasey, Mr. Judge and possibly others about the accusations under oath, and for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear from all parties, however long it takes.



This is the only acceptable approach. Americans should hope that in these hearings the Judiciary Committee acquits itself better than it did the last time it confronted a woman accusing a Supreme Court nominee of sexual misconduct. That was 27 years ago, when some members of an all-male committee gave little credence to Anita Hill’s testimony that Clarence Thomas harassed her when she worked for him. Her testimony was never convincingly rebutted, and yet nearly twice as many people believed Justice Thomas’s story as believed hers.



Twenty-seven years later, Clarence Thomas remains on the court and the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee remains all male. But this time, almost a year into the #MeToo era, a lot more Americans may be ready to believe the woman.





A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 17, 2018, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: #BrettToo?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe