Donald Trump Is America’s Experiment in Having No Government
Yes, it seems scary. But it’s all in the name of science.
By Rosa Brooks April 28, 2017
Try to think like a scientist.
[...]
In our new national science experiment, we’re now embarking on a four-year, uncontrolled experiment in whether the same principle applies to governing. Just as child labor laws (for now!) prevent us from placing a 9-year-old in the Oval Office, ethical concerns about the treatment of animals prevent us from literally installing a blindfolded monkey in the White House. With Donald Trump making decisions, however, we’ve got the next best thing.
Friday, April 28th 2017: Fox News is undergoing intense turmoil as Sean Hannity publicly warns the network is slipping. We also look into the latest geopolitical news on North Korea and Syria. Award-winning Iran-Contra journalist Robert Parry explains the chemical weapons false flags in Syria meant to topple President Assad who's standing in the way of the globalists. We also look into the aftermath of Thursday's Berkeley protests.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox and President Donald J. Trump addressed the crowd at the NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. Performer Lee Greenwood also performed his signature hit, "Proud To Be An American."
Sen. Ted Cruz addresses the crowd at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, an event of the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. Sen. Cruz celebrates the NRA's role in defending freedom and analyzes the critical fight over the Second Amendment being held in the Supreme Court.
Sen. David Perdue addresses the crowd at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, an event of the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. Sen. Perdue argues that despite recent victories, the American public still finds itself in the midst of a constitutional crisis—and time is running out to solve it.
Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.): 2017 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum
Published on Apr 28, 2017 by NRA
Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.) addresses the crowd at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, an event of the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. LtCol. West welcomes the NRA to his hometown of Atlanta, hailing the organization's civil-rights record and celebrating the role of firearms in securing American freedom.
Sen. Luther Strange: 2017 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum
Published on Apr 28, 2017 by NRA
Sen. Luther Strange addresses the crowd at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, an event of the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. He evokes the experience of growing up in a home with firearms and cites the Second Amendment as the backbone of American liberty.
Sheriff David A. Clarke: 2017 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum
Published on Apr 28, 2017 by NRA
Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke addresses the crowd at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, an event of the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. He describes the watershed victory that President Trump's election represents, while cautioning Second Amendment supporters to remain committed to defending freedom against implacable enemies.
This is the full, uncut press conference [and continuing coverage] on April 28th, 2017.
Alex Jones called all media outlets to the steps of the Austin Courthouse to do two things: Set the record straight concerning his child custody trial, and to say to their faces that their underhanded tactics are only helping to destroy traditional corporate media.
National Archives preparing to release JFK assassination docs
All In with Chris Hayes 4/28/17
There’s one person who has the power to intervene and prevent the release of these documents – and that one person may have his own reason to step in. Duration: 2:43
Trump team did vet Flynn, hired him anyway: NBC News
The Rachel Maddow Show 4/28/17
Rachel Maddow reports a scoop from NBC News that the Donald Trump transition team and the White House did do a background check on Mike Flynn. Also, a source tells NBC News they were aware of Flynn's business ties to Turkey, but hired him to be Trump's National Security Adviser anyway. Duration: 20:00
Russian pro-democracy movement resists Putin's oppression
The Rachel Maddow Show 4/28/17
Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice-chairman of Open Russia, an international Russian pro-democracy movement, talks with Rachel Maddow about the risks of opposing Vladimir Putin in Russia and the resilience of Russia's pro-democracy, anti-Putin movement. Duration: 11:22
Best New Thing: Karen Handel's accidental b-roll audio
The Rachel Maddow Show 4/28/17
Rachel Maddow shares some of the audio that was (presumably mistakenly?) left on a large collection of b-roll video of Georgia Republican congressional candidate Karen Handel. Duration: 4:07
Donald Trump says he thought the presidency would be far easier than it's actually been. He says he misses his old life. But will he actually learn anything from these reflections? Lawrence O'Donnell speaks with Nicholas Kristof and Charlie Sykes. Duration: 17:29
The first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency has been ripe with material for late night comedians. Here's a look back at the best jokes about the new administration. Duration: 3:00
Trump serves up red meat to the base just hours from Day 100
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 4/28/17
Sitting in for Brian Williams, MSNBC's Joy Reid talks to our political panel about Trump's remarks to the NRA and looks back at just some of what's happened in the past 99 days of Trump. Duration: 12:41
Trump: I do feel badly for Flynn, but Obama admin. vetted him
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 4/28/17
Saying he felt bad for his ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Donald Trump echoed Sean Spicer by blaming his predecessor for not properly vetting Michael Flynn. Our panel reacts. Duration: 6:41
Tweeter-in-Chief: How Twitter is a factor in Trump's presidency
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 4/28/17
We've never seen a president tweet as much or as freely as Donald Trump does. But how is it affecting his presidency so far? Joy Reid and our political panel react. Duration: 4:08
Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, build the wall, and so much more in his first 100 days. Joy Reid and her guests discuss how he’s instead failed, and failed again. Duration: 12:46
Joy Reid and her guests, including [Malcolm Nance and] director and activist Rob Reiner, point out the flawed arguments from Trump and his camp as they try to pin the Mike Flynn scandal on the Obama administration. Duration: 11:16
Ivanka Trump claims that supporting women is her central issue, but Joy Reid and her guests highlight her silence as her father dismantles programs benefiting women. Duration: 8:37
Trump skips the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—and Joy Reid and her panel debate what it means to have a president too thin-skinned for comic critique. Duration: 13:18
Joy Reid and her guests discuss the millions of people who have participated in world-wide protests for weeks against Trump as he marks the 100th day of his presidency. Duration: 0:31
Would Obamacare repeal create “Jim Crow for healthcare”?
AM Joy 4/29/17
Rep. Joe Kennedy, III joins Joy Reid on the “moral obligation” to provide healthcare for all, as guest Jimmy Williams explains how certain GOP recommendations for the ACA repeal could create state-by-state variations in healthcare access. Duration: 10:29
FULL TRANSCRIPT: President Donald Trump's interview with "Face the Nation" April 30, 2017 On his 100th day in office Saturday, President Donald Trump spoke to CBS News' chief Washington correspondent and host of "Face the Nation," John Dickerson, about his accomplishments at the traditional milestone and beyond, before flying to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to give a speech at a rally. What follows is a full transcript of the interview, which will air on CBS at 10:30 a.m. ET, and on CBSN at 11 a.m. ET and again at 6 p.m. ET. [...] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-interview-full-transcript-face-the-nation/ [with comments]
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LIVE STREAM: President Donald Trump Rally LIVE from Harrisburg Pennsylvania MAGA 100 DAYS FULL EVENT!
President Donald Trump Rally LIVE from Harrisburg Pennsylvania 4-29-17.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsbUdPWtBY [the first round of introductory apoplectics begins at c. the 33:40 mark; the second round of introductory apoplectics begins at c. the 40:55 mark; Pence's proselytizing begins at c. the 1:20:55 mark; Trump's performance begins at c. the 1:31:30 mark; with comments]
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WATCH LIVE: President Donald Trump speaking at rally in Pennsylvania on his 100th day in office.
Cartoon Donald Trump Dreads The White House Correspondents' Dinner
Published on Feb 28, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Stephen digs beneath the surface to expose the real reason the President won't be attending the annual press roast in Washington. (Monday [February 27, 2017] monologue part 3)
Jenny Petersen reacting to news of early returns in the Georgia congressional race this month. Credit John Bazemore/Associated Press
By MICHELLE GOLDBERG APRIL 29, 2017
MARIETTA, GA. — Shortly before President Trump’s swearing-in, I spoke to Steve Cohen, a liberal congressman from Tennessee, about his decision to skip the ceremony. Mr. Cohen said his horror of Mr. Trump almost made him understand how Tea Partyers might have felt under President Barack Obama. “I want my country back!” he said, echoing the right’s rallying cry.
One hundred days into his administration, President Trump has few legislative achievements to his name. But he has forced liberals to experience the near-apocalyptic revulsion that conservatives have often felt toward Democratic presidents. In doing so, he has unwittingly created a new movement in American politics, as Democrats channel the sort of all-encompassing outrage that has long fueled grass-roots conservatism.
For decades, Democrats have envied the Republicans’ passionate, locally attuned base. It turns out that what Democrats were missing was a sense of existential emergency. Mr. Trump has provided it.
Objectively, there’s no comparison between the conservative demonization of Mr. Obama and the progressive case against Mr. Trump. People on the right saw Mr. Obama as a Kenyan-born secret Muslim with a hidden agenda to hobble American power and a health care reform plan to establish “death panels.” None of that is true.
People on the left believe that Mr. Trump has incited hatred against minorities, and boasted about grabbing women by their genitals. Democrats think that the president and his family are blatantly profiting off the presidency and that he welcomed the help of a hostile foreign power during the election. All this is grounded in fact.
Facts aside, there is an emotional symmetry between the conservative reaction to past Democratic presidents and the liberal response to Mr. Trump. Suddenly, left-of-center people get what it’s like to have a president who is the living negation of all they value, a president who makes them ashamed before their children and terrified for their future. Now they’ve learned what it’s like to worry that malevolent foreign conspirators are manipulating American affairs. And these feelings, it turns out, are an extremely powerful goad to political action.
I saw this recently in Georgia’s Sixth District, a conservative area that had sent to Congress first Newt Gingrich and then Tom Price, now Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services. I was there to report on the special congressional election to fill Mr. Price’s seat. Ahead of the April 18 open primary, a Democrat, Jon Ossoff, was showing unexpected strength. In the event, he only narrowly failed to win the district outright, and goes forward to a June runoff against the leading Republican vote-getter.
Lots of outsiders were paying attention to the race; Mr. Ossoff raised a staggering $8 million for what was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Trump’s presidency. On the ground, though, the people powering the campaign were locals, many of them previously apolitical suburban women shocked into action by the presidential election.
In November’s aftermath, Amy Nosek, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mother of two living in an affluent Atlanta suburb, sank into depression, though she’d never been depressed before. “I didn’t even want to go pick up my kids from the school bus because I didn’t want to talk to the other parents, or see anybody,” she told me.
As an antidote, she and a friend founded a local chapter of Indivisible, the network of anti-Trump groups that sprang up after the election. Soon, they were consumed by political organizing. “We’re working all the time,” Ms. Nosek said. “Sometimes, I fall asleep on the couch at 9 or 10 p.m., and then I wake up at 2 and I’m working until 4.”
Like her, most of the activists I met were new to electoral politics. Some had not even known what district they lived in or who their local representatives were. Now, thanks to Mr. Trump, they were obsessed.
I was struck by how their stories echoed tales of conservative political awakening. Until the rise of Mr. Trump, wave after wave of right-wing Republican activism was driven by comfortable but morally scandalized suburbanites, particularly suburban women. Shaken by what they saw as liberal attacks on beloved institutions — family, church, law enforcement, private property — they organized politically, and found meaning and community in it.
This phenomenon long predates the Tea Party movement that so galvanized Republican voters for the 2010 midterm elections. In her 2001 study, “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right,” Lisa McGirr described how Orange County, Calif., became ground zero for militant conservatism in the early 1960s: “At living room bridge clubs, at backyard barbecues, and at kitchen coffee klatches, the middle-class men and women of Orange County ‘awakened’ to what they perceived as the threats of communism and liberalism.”
Campaigning to save the nuclear family from the depredations of the Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis Schlafly induced housewives to become local activists.
“These were local women whom most politicians feared to alienate,” wrote Mrs. Schlafly’s biographer, Donald Critchlow, “because these women talked politics, volunteered in political campaigns and wore political buttons when they came to meetings.”
Democrats have their passionate local leaders, but they’ve lacked a Schlafly-style nationwide network of kitchen-table activists. And outside big cities, the party has allowed its local infrastructure to whither.
Mr. Trump is changing all that.
For many Democrats, his election was a traumatic event that demands a response, lest their country become unrecognizable. Democratic women, especially, find it intolerable and degrading to call Mr. Trump their president.
“The story we hear again and again and again is that it’s moms and other women who came together after the election and said, ‘This is totally unacceptable,’ ” said Ezra Levin, one of Indivisible’s founders.
Alan Abramowitz, a professor at Emory University who studies political polarization, said of Democratic antipathy to Mr. Trump, “If anything, I think it’s gotten stronger since he became president because the stuff he’s been doing has just exacerbated those negative feelings.”
There are dangers for Democrats in this absolute loathing. Hatred obliterates nuance and fosters conspiracy theories, a particular temptation when the country is sorting through real evidence of the Trump campaign’s worrisome foreign entanglements. It’s probably not good for America that every election — even an off-year special election in placid suburban Georgia — feels like a struggle over the future of civilization.
Yet, as the right has repeatedly shown over the past 50 years, disgust is politically potent. Nothing, Professor Abramowitz said, works as well as what political scientists call “negative affect” — intense dislike — for “getting people energized and mobilized.”
So far, the lesson of this presidency is that when it comes to building political power, love does not, in fact, trump hate.
Two members of alt-right accused of making white supremacist hand signs in White House after receiving press passes
Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovich pose in the White House briefing room. Twitter/Cassandra Fairbanks
The journalists say the hand symbol is innocent - but it has been condemned as 'racist' by the Anti-Defamation League
Emily Shugerman New York | Sunday 30 April 2017 08:07 BST
Two conservative journalists have sparked outcry on social media by making what some have interpreted as a white supremacist hand symbol at a recent visit to the White House.
Freelance journalist Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks, a reporter for Russian news outlet Sputnik, posed for a picture behind the podium in the White House briefing room. In the photo, they are making a hand sign that can be used to signify “white power.”
“Just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House,” Fusion senior reporter Emma Roller tweeted, alongside a screenshot of the picture.
Ms Fairbanks, however, claims the hand gesture was not a reference to the white power movement. She pointed to her partial Puerto Rican heritage as evidence that she is not a white supremacist.
“White power!!!!!!! Except I'm Puerto Rican. Can it be PR power?!” she tweeted.
Ms Fairbanks’ supporters point out that the hand symbol is also used to mean “OK.” Photos show people of all races using the symbol to signify that everything is “alright.”
The symbol, however, has become more contentious with the rise of the alt-right [ http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/alt-right ] – a far-right contingent in the United States that rejects both mainstream conservatism and liberal ideologies. The self-proclaimed founder of the alt-right, Richard Spencer, is a well-known white supremacist.
The resurgence of the symbol may be traced back to a popular alt-right meme, known as “smug Pepe,” which began circulating on alt-right, pro-Trump message boards in 2015. Mr Trump often uses the symbol when speaking, explaining its significance with the president’s supporters.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) characterises the symbol as a “racist hand sign.”
“Some white supremacists, particularly in California, may use a two-handed hand sign in which one hand forms the letter ‘W’ and the other hand forms the letter ‘P,’ to represent WP or ‘White Power,’” an entry in the ADL’s hate symbols database reads.
Ms Fairbanks joined notoriety when she moved from supporting Senator Bernie Sanders to supporting Mr Trump for president. She now frequently speaks out against Islamic terrorism and the Black Lives Matter movement. Her employer, Sputnik, applied for White House press credentials last month.
Mr Cernovich is the founder of the men’s rights blog Danger & Play, and author of the book “MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again.” He received White House press credentials on 25 April.
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