Friday Talking Points (477) -- Read The Bill!
Add this week in Congress to the enormous mountain of steaming Republican hypocrisy, we suppose. Remember back when Republicans got their knickers in such a big twist over Democrats passing lengthy bills without adequate time for congressmen to understand? When the Affordable Care Act passed, some Republicans even chanted "Read the bill!" in protest during the vote. Those were the days, eh? When Republicans retook Congress, they did so in part on a promise that every bill would have a 72-hour period between when it was released publicly and when the vote would happen, in both chambers of Congress. That statement, as they say in Washington, is no longer operative. The Republican-led Congress just passed a 2,200-plus page omnibus budget bill mere hours after the text was released (the House voted 17 hours after the bill was filed, which fell 55 hours short of their promise). Neither the House nor the Senate got anywhere near three days to read the bill. Which is one more big dump on top of the rest of "GOP Hypocrisy Mountain," raising it to new malodorous heights.
In addition, Republicans used to get quite upset at deficits and deficit spending. Those days, also, are long gone. Nowadays, as long as they toss the lion's share of the money to either (1) the Pentagon, (2) Wall Street, or (3) the wealthiest one-percenters, everything's copacetic with blowing enormous holes in the deficit. Because Republicans really don't believe any of their own sanctimoniousness, they just rely on using it as a political weapon against Democrats whenever they are in charge. Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
Of course, there are always a few with the integrity to complain even when it is their own party in the wrong. Rand Paul was one of them, although he didn't go to the lengths that he did on the previous hastily-voted-upon budget bill, when he singlehandedly caused a brief government shutdown. Still, Paul was not happy, as he reported it took him over two hours just to print the bill. He then tweeted out a photo of him holding the massive measure, with the message "Congress is broken." Republican Representative Justin Amash was even more scathing, saying of the whole process: "I think it's disgusting. Totally irresponsible. Totally violates our duty to our constituents." When asked about those promises to allow time to "Read The Bill," Amash responded: "Yeah, they lied. Flat out." But such refreshing honesty was rare indeed among the Republican caucus.
With 2,200 pages of legalese, the media (as well as members of Congress) are still digesting the bill. Democrats won a number of important concessions in the negotiations, although there were a few pot-sweeteners for Republicans as well. However, as usual, most of the contentious issues were just punted down the field. The bill did not address the DACA Dreamers, serious gun safety reform, or even cleaning up the abysmal sexual harassment reporting system within Congress itself. All were shelved for another day. Trump got $1.6 billion in border security money, but with the explicit prohibition against building his favored wall (some fencing money was included, but with the restriction that none of it could be built using Trump's new prototype wall designs). As with all such monster budget bills, it'll likely be a few weeks before everyone realizes exactly what is in it. Because, of course, there was no time to "Read The Bill!"
In a bizarre last-minute twist, after the bill cleared the Senate late last night, President Trump threatened to veto it in an early-morning tweet: "I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded." Congress, by this time, had scarpered off for yet another of their multiweek vacation periods, so if Trump had followed through on his veto threat, the government would almost certainly have shut down (and a whole lot of spring vacation plans would have been ruined, as Congress would have been forced to return). But, of course, Trump wasn't serious (when is he?), and he begrudgingly signed it, hours later. He called the bill "ridiculous," and swore: "I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again." Nobody took him seriously, of course.
Speaking of not taking the White House seriously, two personnel changes happened this week, both of which were denied only days earlier. After rumors circulated that Trump would be shaking up his legal team, Trump tweeted: "The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job..." This week, John Dowd left Trump's legal team to be replaced by Trump's favorite Fox News legal personality. Because highly-respected Ted Olson turned the offer down, apparently (seems like many legal bigwigs have other pressing business than joining the Trump legal team, and who can blame them, really?). Ty Cobb is also reportedly on thin ice, and could be the next to go.
We sure hope Trump's new lawyer is up on sexual harassment law, non-disclosure agreements, and defamation, because he's about to get hit by a real trifecta of court cases. A former Playboy Playmate of the Year just detailed her months-long affair with Trump in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper, who also scored the scoop of interviewing porn star Stormy Daniels (which will air Sunday night on 60 Minutes). Both are suing to be released from their non-disclosure hush-money agreements. But the bigger legal news came from New York, where a judge ruled that the defamation case brought by Summer Zervos will indeed go forward -- which opens up the possibility of Trump being forced into a deposition where he'll have to answer under oath about his entire sexual history and his history of lying about his entire sexual history. The judge's reasoning was simple: if Bill Clinton could be sued and deposed over his sexual past, then so can Donald Trump. We certainly don't envy any lawyer tasked with preparing Trump for such a deposition, that's for sure.
But getting back to White House personnel denials, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, after the Washington Post reported that H. R. McMaster was on the way out, tweeted: "Just spoke to @POTUS and Gen. H.R. McMaster - contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC." By week's end, McMaster was out and John Bolton had been named to replace him. You remember John Bolton, don't you? One of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq War who is now champing at the bit to start wars with both Iran and North Korea? Yeah, that guy, mustache and all.
Trump, when he was not firing people or accepting resignations last week, once again metaphorically dropped to his knees in front of the sheer manliness that is Vladimir Putin. Trump scheduled a call to Putin early in the week, and while his briefing book begged him "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" (in all caps), Trump completely ignored the advice and began the call by congratulating Putin on his victory in getting "re-elected." John McCain shot back: "An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections," adding that Trump had "insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election." Ouch.
Trump also decided on the spur of the moment to set up a one-on-one with Putin, which took his entire staff by complete surprise, since such a meeting hadn't even been discussed, much less agreed to. As Trey Gowdy noted last weekend, it's almost as if Trump is bending over backwards to look as guilty as possible whenever the subject of Russia or Putin comes up.
The bigger story, though, was how fast the "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" tidbit leaked. The instruction was in a presidential briefing book, which has very limited access, so one of Trump's top advisors had to have been responsible for the leak. Former White House staffer Michael Gerson had his own take:
But it was The Daily Show who had the best reaction, tweeting: "@realDonaldTrump DO NOT RESIGN." Heh. We see what you did, there.
Toward the end of the week, Trump rolled out the 2.0 version of the Trump Trade War™, which went over like a lead balloon. Trump had been forced to significantly dial back his announced tariffs on steel and aluminum (which we explored in more detail yesterday), but he successfully buried this embarrassing news by announcing new tariffs on $60 billion in Chinese goods. The Dow Jones dropped by over 700 points yesterday in reaction, and continued the slide today by dropping another 400-plus points. China is considering how to react to this news, but one thing for certain is that they're most likely to target American agriculture, meaning a whole lot of farmers in red states are about to start paying for their unquestioning support of all things Trump.
Let's see, what else is happening? Conor Lamb's opponent formally conceded the race in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, bowing to the reality of Lamb's thin victory. So he should be sworn into the House of Representatives soon.
The big news this coming weekend will be the March For Our Lives, which is going to showcase the growing political power of the high school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Reportedly, no one over 18 will be allowed to address the crowd, which is certainly appropriate for a rally created by high school students. Congress, since the shooting, hasn't managed to do anything meaningful at all on gun safety, so it's a safe bet that the students are going to be pretty outraged at the inaction.
Speaking of guns, a Republican state goverment candidate in Kentucky had to apologize for joking that he was going to shoot his political opponent in the chest. When John Yarmouth posted a photo of himself wearing a pin with an "F" on it (showing pride in his F rating from the National Rifle Association), Republican Carl Nett responded with a tweet: "Move it over just a bit. I was trained center mass."
It once would have seemed unimaginable, but at this point we have to wonder just how far we are from politicians reviving the age-old tradition of fighting actual duels between themselves. Politicos in Washington used to sneak off to Bladensburg Field in Maryland to hold such duels (because they were illegal within Washington D.C.), a few centuries back. But with a former vice president challenging a sitting president to fisticuffs and other politicians "joking" about shooting each other, we sincerely wonder how long it'll be before someone seriously suggests it "as a way to reintroduce politeness" to politics. At this point, we really wouldn't be all that surprised by such a development.
Or maybe not. Maybe there are other ways to work things out. Senators Jeff Flake and Cory Booker just held a friendly snowball fight/duel on the Capitol lawn, which was actually pretty funny. Booker announced the fight with a taunt:
A snowball duel. Capitol East Lawn.
Who gets hit most,
buys other's staff Pizza.
You Snow Who Is Going To Win!
Arizona doesn't have much snow!
They apparently lined up and paced off and then let the snowballs fly. But Booker's optimism was misplaced, as he seemed to get the worst of it. He later lamented:
Maybe that's how Congress should have settled what went in the budget bill? How many of us would pay good money for a pay-per-view free-for-all snowball fight between the competing factions on the Capitol lawn? It certainly would have been more entertaining, that's for sure!
Every so often we have to recognize some Democrat out there working in relative obscurity for a worthy goal. This week, Eric Holder fits this category perfectly.
After leaving office, Holder (and, to a lesser degree, Barack Obama) took up the cause of fighting back against gerrymandering and also fighting to boost the number of Democrats in state governments. Holder formed the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. An affiliate of Holder's group (the National Redistricting Foundation) successfully sued Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker over his refusal to call special elections to replace a state senator and state assemblyman. Walker was scared the seats would flip to Democrats, especially after a special election in January was indeed flipped from red to blue.
This week, the judge who ruled against Walker ordered the governor to call for the special elections within a week's time. Holder responded to the ruling: "This is an important victory for the impacted citizens of Wisconsin who have gone without representation because of Governor Walker's refusal to call special elections. One of our most basic rights as American citizens is that we get to vote and have representation in our legislatures. Governor Walker's actions have undermined that right and it never should have taken legal action to force him to do his job."
Holder's work to elect Democrats at the state level is to be applauded, and is seen by many as a sort of mea culpa from Barack Obama, who saw roughly 1,000 state-level legislative seats flip from Democratic to Republican during his time in office. That trend has already begun to reverse ever since Trump was elected, but there's still a long way to go. It will take a concerted effort to do so, which will include things like pushing back legally against gerrymandering (as was done recently in Pennsylvania) and pushing back against Republicans who are too scared to trust the voters (as in Wisconsin).
So while the legal victory was relatively obscure, the efforts of Eric Holder are nonetheless impressive. He's fighting the good fight out there, and helping Democrats reverse the tide at the state level. For doing so, and for handing Scott Walker a big political loss that does nothing short of make him look terrified of the voters, Eric Holder is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week. Keep up the good work!
{Check out the National Democratic Redistricting Committee's official webpage, if you'd like to learn more about Eric Holder's group.}
Sigh. Uncle Joe, say it ain't so....
Joe Biden, who is reportedly seriously considering another run for the presidency, this week decided to stoop down and roll around in the gutter with Donald Trump. That's pretty harsh, but we think it is deserved.
Biden, during a speech this week, said that if he and Trump were in high school together and if Trump spoke about and treated women the way he routinely does, then Biden would "take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him." He went on to compare Trump to the "fattest, ugliest s.o.b." in the locker room.
Trump, of course, took the bait, and tweeted back to "Crazy Joe" to, essentially, bring it on. Trump called Biden weak, predicted he'd win a fight between the two, and ended with: "He doesn't know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way."
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to politics in the twenty-first century.
Now, some folks are delighted that Biden took on Trump so directly. But we can't count ourselves among this number, for two reasons. The first is that the whole thing is so depressingly juvenile. Two septuagenarians are going to stage a cage match? OK, sure, the pay-per-view numbers would be through the roof, but (kidding aside) is this really the best we can do as a country?
The second (and bigger) reason we can't support Biden's tactic is that we have always universally condemned violence -- or even threats of violence, or even joking about violence -- in the political arena. Politicians shouldn't go there, ever. Maybe you can get away with making such funny jokes (see the Flake/Booker snowball fight, above), but the risk that they'll fall flat is enormous. As for serious threats of violence between politicians (including even just semi-serious threats), they should always be universally condemned.
Now, we do realize that Michelle Obama's famous "when they go low, we go high" is not always entirely practical in the world of modern politics. Sometimes you have to (metaphorically) fight back against the lowest blows, and at times this even almost requires stooping to the level of your attacker. But there is still a limit to this, and for us the limit is threatening to beat up your opponent.
So for his attempt at either machismo or humor, sadly we have to award Joe Biden this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Say it ain't so, Joe. Don't go so low -- oh, no, no no!
{Joe Biden is now a private citizen, and it is our policy not to provide contact information for people who are not currently in office, sorry.}
Volume 477 (3/23/18)
Another mixed bag this week, from crimes of omission (400 days since a Trump solo press conference!) to the Grammar Police. So let's just get right to it all, shall we?
400 days and counting
We wrote a whole article about this, earlier in the week.
"Today marks the 400th day since Donald Trump has given a solo press conference. 400 days! The one and only time Trump held a solo presser was in February of last year. Since that time, nothing. The only conclusion possible is that Trump is afraid of holding a press conference. He knows full well that he'll come off looking ill-informed (and even that's being polite) while the press will come off as knowing more than him on many subjects. That's certainly what happened in the only press conference he's held, so why would it be any different now? The White House Press Corps has really dropped the ball on this one, because they should be making this an issue on a regular basis. Once again: it has been four hundred days since Donald Trump faced the press on his own. What is he so scared of?"
Scared of the voters
Continuing the basic theme....
"Wisconsin's Scott Walker is apparently so terrified of his own voters that he is going to extraordinary lengths to prevent two special elections from happening, even though state law demands that they be held. Walker just lost a court case and has been ordered by the judge to act within a week to select a date to hold the elections. Walker may even appeal this ruling, because that is how desperate he is to avoid another embarrassing loss at the polls. When Republicans lost a recent special election in Wisconsin, Walker himself said it was 'a wake-up call,' which apparently (to him) means breaking state law to avoid any more such electoral defeats. I've never seen a governor so scared of his own voters, personally."
Oh, please please please!
Trump flirts with multiplying the chaos a thousandfold.
"Donald Trump is reportedly considering the idea of getting rid not only of John Kelly, but the entire position of White House chief of staff. NBC News reported that: 'Trump has mused to close associates about running the West Wing as he did his business empire, essentially serving as his own chief of staff.' What would this mean? Trump 'envisioned a scenario in which a handful of top aides would report directly to him -- bypassing the traditional gatekeeper position.' Because that would surely solve the problem of White House chaos, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an arrangement? If you think you've seen the most wildly out-of-control White House operation of all time already, you ain't seen nothin' yet if Trump actually follows through on this insane idea. Soon we may look back on the days of Anthony Scaramucci and Michael Flynn as 'the good old days when the Trump White House was more stable.' The idea of Trump acting as his own chief of staff absolutely boggles the mind, in fact. But at this point, it wouldn't surprise me in the least."
Wittingly harming our system of government for profit
Fox News military commentator Ralph Peters just quit his job, in disgust. An email he wrote to Fox was leaked, in which he called the network "a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration," adding that Donald Trump was "terrified" of Vladimir Putin. And he was just getting started. Here's a sampling of what else he had to say:
Bernie still going strong
Bernie Sanders still has a message that is resonating with voters.
"Bernie Sanders had a pretty good week this week. He held a televised town hall on the problem of inequality and drew in 1.7 million viewers. So there's obviously still a whole lot of people out there who are interested in his political message. And in the Illinois primary, Sanders-backed candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia easily won his primary with 66 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Illinois voters also dethroned one of the leaders of the infamous Chicago Democratic machine, signaling that the days of Rahm Emanuel-style politics in the Windy City may be coming to an end. Other Democrats should take note -- for all the hand-wringing inside the Beltway, there is already a Democratic political platform that is still wildly popular out there. Just ask Bernie Sanders, he'll tell you all about it."
Trump voters take it on the chin
The real question is whether they'll actually notice or not.
"Let's see what the Trump Trade War™ with China has already brought us. Who exactly is going to pay for Trump's new tariffs? Well, first and foremost would be those who own lots of stocks, as the Dow Jones average fell over 700 points yesterday and over 400 points today. So big business and wealthy investors are already getting hurt. China is already floating ideas for what U.S. products they'll be slapping their own tariffs on, and the news is likely to be bad for two other big groups of Trump supporters: low-income families and red-state farmers. If China institutes broad tariffs, then everything at Wal-Mart is going to cost more very soon now. But the real threat is that China will slap tariffs on pork and soybeans, which are huge agricultural products in over a dozen states that Trump won in the election. It'll be interesting to see how far these affected voters are willing to go in supporting Trump when he is directly influencing their own bottom line. Can't wait to hear farm-state GOP congressmen twist in the wind over whether to support the Trump tariffs or not. They'll have the choice of standing with Trump, or standing up for their own constituents."
Wether it rings a bell or not?
OK, we fully admit that whenever we attempt to spell "bellwether" we usually get it wrong. Which the spell-checker informs us, before we publicly post anything....
"Donald Trump sent a tweet this week which contained two boneheaded spelling mistakes. He wrote: 'Special Council {sic} is told to find crimes, wether {sic} a crime exists or not.' Now, 'council' is actually a word, just not the word Trump was looking for. But 'wether'? Really? Bob Mueller aside, as far as the Grammar Police are concerned, 'wether' is indeed a spelling crime, Mister President."
Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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