June 5, 2020

The lawless law-and-order president

“We need law and order,” President Trump declared this week, calling for military and police forces to crush protests against police brutality. “LAW & ORDER!” he has tweeted four times in recent days, as his aides call for the same.

Perhaps they might consider leading by example.

This administration, after all, must be among the most lawless and disorderly in U.S. history.

An exhaustive catalogue of the Trump White House’s demonstrated contempt for the rule of law is hardly possible within my allotted column inches. But let’s consider some of the highlights, among the heaps of wrongdoing committed by White House aides, Trump Organization employees and the president himself — as well as lawbreaking outside the administration that our president has either ignored or encouraged.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lawless-law-and-order-president/2020/06/04/04977832-a695-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

June 5, 2020

With White House effectively a fortress, some see Trump's strength -- but others see weakness

The security perimeter around the White House keeps expanding. Tall black fencing is going up seemingly by the hour. Armed guards and sharpshooters and combat troops are omnipresent.

In the 72 hours since Monday’s melee at Lafayette Square, the White House has been transformed into a veritable fortress — the physical manifestation of President Trump’s vision of law-and-order “domination” over the millions of Americans who have taken to the streets to protest racial injustice.

The White House is now so heavily fortified that it resembles the monarchical palaces or authoritarian compounds of regimes in faraway lands — strikingly incongruous with the historic role of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, which since its cornerstone was laid in 1792 has been known as the People’s House and celebrated as an accessible symbol of American democracy.



This week’s security measures follow nighttime demonstrations just outside the campus gates last weekend that turned violent. White House officials stressed that Trump was not involved in the decision to beef up security or to increase the fencing around the compound’s perimeter, with one senior administration official saying that the precautions are not unique to the Trump administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-his-white-house-effectively-a-fortress-trump-sees-strength--but-others-see-weakness/2020/06/04/3c70fa26-a672-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html

June 4, 2020

Trump's Bleach Moment Now Seeming Like Career High Point

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s widely ridiculed musing about the healing powers of household disinfectants now seems like a career high point, according to prominent historians.

While Trump’s suggestion that ingesting bleach could treat the coronavirus appeared, at the time, to be a catastrophic misstep, his actions in recent days have forced many historians to revise that assessment, Davis Logsdon, a Presidential historian, said.

“This week, we’ve seen Trump tear-gas peaceful protesters, offend religious leaders by using a Bible as a prop, and threaten to use the military against the American people,” Logsdon said. “In retrospect, suggesting that people ingest Clorox and put ultraviolet lights inside their bodies seems like the act of a responsible public servant.”

Logsdon added that, with unrest roiling the nation and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, “Trump’s best bet may be to remind the American people, ‘I’m the man who told you to drink bleach.’ ”

“All things considered, that may be his finest hour,” the historian said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trumps-bleach-moment-now-seeming-like-career-high-point

June 4, 2020

Graham says Mattis buys into unfair media 'narrative' about Trump

Source: Washington Post

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday accused former defense secretary Jim Mattis of “buying into a narrative” from the news media that everything wrong with the country is President Trump’s fault, which Graham characterized as “easy, cheap politics.”

His comments came in response to a remarkable statement Wednesday by Mattis in which he accused Trump of trying to deliberately divide Americans and took exception to Trump’s threats of military force on American streets to quell protests.

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during an appearance on Fox News that Mattis had earned “the right to express himself” but suggested some of the blame he was pinning on Trump should be attached to mayors of the cities where violence is occurring.

“It is so fashionable to blame President Trump for every wrong in America, and he can be a handful — And can he do better? Yes — but the problems we have in America today were not caused by President Trump,” Graham said, adding: “This is just such easy, cheap politics.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/04/george-floyd-protests-live-updates/#link-ACQLFELSOVG6XH277ELNC4Z5GY

June 4, 2020

China Doesn't Want a New World Order. It Wants This One.

Why would China go to the trouble of capsizing the global order when it can simply take it over?

China is in the midst of a fierce battle to salvage its reputation.

Under fire for their part in the pandemic and reproached for their move to assert control over Hong Kong, the country’s officials are in firefighting mode. Their approach has two parts. First, sell the China story — emphasizing its success in the fight against the coronavirus and glossing over its initial errors. Second, attack those who seek to tarnish the country’s image.

President Xi Jinping has left this battle to his subordinates. As the United States falters and the world spins into crisis, he has a bigger campaign to occupy him: taking over the international institutions, like the World Health Organization and the United Nations, that manage the world.

The plan bears a suitably benign and innocuous title — “Community With a Shared Future for Mankind.” First proposed by Mr. Xi in 2013 and introduced at the United Nations two years later, the concept revolves around the importance of consultation and dialogue, of inclusivity and consensus, of win-win cooperation and shared benefits. It is, in short, entirely vague. It contains no specific action points and no tangible outlines of a new world order.

That’s the point.

Contrary to speculation, China has always said it is not seeking to overthrow the global order. We should listen. Why would China go to the trouble of capsizing the global order when it can simply take it over, whole and intact?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/china-america-united-nations.html

Trump and the Republicans have willingly surrendered our international leadership role to China. The 21st century will be the Chinese century.

June 4, 2020

The military officers aiding Trump's stunt have been promoted to the level of their incompetence

A small fraction of a large number can be a significant number. So, although the fact that there are a significant number of ninnies among the 329 million people in this country is embarrassing, it is not surprising. What is puzzling is that specimens such as Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have reached positions of considerable responsibility in today’s government.

It might be a fact of today’s political physics that these two have floated upward because they are lighter than air. That, however, is an insufficient explanation of their eminence. Neither is it satisfactory to merely note that such people can be expected to be found in high offices when the dispenser of offices, civilian and military, probably would explicitly reject basic civic norms if he knew they existed.

They will not exist for long if the nation does not recoil against an administration that includes a defense secretary who refers to this Republic as a “battlespace.” And also includes a four-star Army general who reports to the Oval Office in combat fatigues, dressed appropriately for an evening of police and military engagements that involved clearing a public park of peaceful demonstrators, and intimidating protesters elsewhere. The purpose of the clearing, achieved with flash-bang grenades and chemicals, was to enable the Bible-brandishing commander in chief to stand in front of a church for the purpose of stroking the portion of his political base that is composed of Evangelical Christians who relish rendering their souls unto this particular Caesar. Unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

On Tuesday, Esper’s evolving explanation was that he did not know details about the event his commander was conscripting him into. Monday night’s Battle of Lafayette Square, which took place in a traditional venue of protests, and operations elsewhere in Washington, were inglorious engagements for the U.S. military, comparable to the events of July 28, 1932. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to disperse the members of the self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force, generally remembered as the Bonus Army or Bonus March, which at one point that sweltering summer numbered approximately 20,000.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-military-officers-aiding-trumps-stunt-have-been-promoted-to-the-level-of-their-incompetence/2020/06/03/e73330ce-a5d6-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

George Will is getting woke. Only took half a century.

June 3, 2020

This country desperately needs a leader who knows the difference between tough and strong

What the country desperately needs right now is a president who knows the difference between acting tough and being strong.

Instead, we have Donald Trump, who revealed something fundamental about himself on Monday night when he staged the most shameful photo op in memory.

After police ambushed hundreds of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square with tear gas and rubber bullets, the way was cleared for Trump to emerge from the White House, stroll across the park to historic St. John’s Episcopal Church and hold up a Bible.

Clergy called out the stunt for what it was: a desecration. “We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so, so grounding to our lives and everything we do,” said the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. “It is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-country-desperately-needs-a-leader-who-knows-the-difference-between-tough-and-strong/2020/06/02/1a83d0c6-a4df-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html

June 3, 2020

Trump's threats to deploy troops move America closer to anarchy

ATTORNEY GENERAL William P. Barr on Monday ordered federal police and National Guard forces to disperse protesters who were peacefully gathered in front of the White House. As flash munitions exploded and tear gas swirled, President Trump delivered a Rose Garden rant denouncing “acts of domestic terror” he said had taken place in Washington and other U.S. cities, and threatened to “deploy the United States military” to those that fail to “dominate the streets.”

The president then walked across Lafayette Square to pose with a Bible in front of a church. The clearing of the square — carried out without the involvement of D.C. police, who were not told about it until moments before it occurred — enabled this cheap political theater, and we suspect the same term can be applied to Mr. Trump’s vow to deploy active-duty Army units. But military and congressional leaders ought to be telling him that any such action would be unacceptable.

As it is, Mr. Trump appears to be mobilizing federal forces to Washington, where he has the authority to take over the National Guard and deploy other troops without consulting local authorities. According to the New York Times, the Army has been ordered to transfer a military police unit from Fort Bragg, N.C., and 600 to 800 National Guard troops from other states will reinforce the 1,200-member D.C. National Guard. One military official told the Times Mr. Trump was creating his own “palace guard.” Mr. Trump said he was “dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to the District “to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and wanton destruction of property.”

There has been vandalism and some looting in the District — often carried out, as The Post reported, by mostly white extremists and criminals who have nothing to do with the thousands who have peacefully and justifiably demonstrated for racial justice. But calling the smashing of shop windows “domestic terror” is cynical hyperbole designed to cast Mr. Trump as a “president of law and order,” as he put it. D.C. police are capable of containing the disturbances without interference by “heavily armed soldiers.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-threats-to-deploy-troops-move-america-closer-to-anarchy/2020/06/02/88975a60-a4ee-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

June 3, 2020

The Battle of Lafayette Square and the undermining of American democracy

Anyone concerned about the state of America’s democracy ought to have been troubled Monday at the sight of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, striding behind Donald Trump during his presidential show of force at Lafayette Square. Dressed in combat fatigues and walking with Attorney General William P. Barr, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and others, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer did more than make himself part of the tableau of Trump’s photo op and campaign commercial. Milley gave tangible meaning to the president’s threat to deploy the U.S. military to put down “domestic terror” in the United States. His presence also raised questions about the military’s role as the country heads toward November and what the president has already declared could be “the greatest Rigged Election in history.”

The president’s call for military deployments against protesters was not some random Trumpian effusion. He and his advisers and supporters are building a legal justification for deploying troops on American streets. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper advised the nation’s governors to “dominate the battlespace,” by which he meant American cities. Prominent Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), a close Trump ally and presidential aspirant, called for deploying “the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes,” against the “insurrectionists,” a deliberate reference to the Insurrection Act of 1807, which gives the president broad powers to deploy federal troops. Trump tweeted that Cotton’s suggestions were “100% Correct.” This is the context in which Milley appeared with the president in his battle fatigues. It is the context in which a U.S. Army helicopter descended to rooftop level in Washington’s Chinatown hours later, frightening and scattering protesters in a “show of force” that snapped trees and nearly injured the fleeing civilians.

Dictators rule by controlling the “power ministries”: the domestic police and intelligence services, foreign intelligence services, and armed forces. U.S. democracy has been sustained by a strong tradition of ensuring that the power ministries serve the Constitution and the broader interests of the American people, not the political and personal interests of the individual in the White House.

This has been a tradition, however, not an ironclad guarantee. The Founders gave the executive immense powers to ensure that the young nation could survive in a dangerous world. They knew these powers carried immense dangers; that was one reason they added the impeachment clause to allow the removal of a president not only for violating the laws but also for legally abusing the great powers of the office. Mostly they counted on other factors to check the president: the mutual jealousy of the branches, especially Congress; the vigilance of the people (“a republic if you can keep it”); and the devotion of elected officials, including the president and Cabinet officers, to the spirit of democracy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-mark-milley-striding-behind-trump-through-lafayette-square-was-so-troubling/2020/06/02/81ef5388-a503-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

June 2, 2020

The central feature of Trump's presidency: False claims and disinformation

Will future presidents return to trying to tell the truth?

For weeks, as the coronavirus silently spread through the United States, President Trump belittled the threat and repeatedly praised China for “transparency” and the World Health Organization for its handling of the outbreak. But when the death toll mounted and the scope of the public health crisis became too difficult to ignore, Trump reversed course.

“I always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” he declared — then angrily blamed China for failing to contain the new virus and accused the WHO of helping a coverup. He later withdrew the United States from the WHO.

Likewise, when a distraught widower asked Twitter to remove Trump’s tweets insinuating that the man’s wife had been killed by MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, Trump ignored the plea and repeated the slander.

The president’s technique — refined over half a century in public life — is relentless and unforgiving: Never admit any error, constantly repeat falsehoods, and have no shame about your tactics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-fact-checker-book/2020/06/01/c6323b88-a435-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html