Financier and former Russia investor William Browder testified at a hearing on the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This law requires those representing the political interests of foreign powers to disclose their relationship. Mr. Browder told committee members that the Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Donald Trump Jr. was heading Russian efforts to get sanctions under the Magnitsky Act repealed. The act blocked Russian government officials and businessmen associated with the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky from entering the U.S., froze assets in U.S. banks, and banned the use of American banking systems.
Bill Browder's Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes. Flowers are pictured on the grave of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky at the Preobrazhensky cemetery in Moscow March 11, 2013. Jul 25, 2017 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/ [Browder's complete prepared remarks; with comments]
Full Show - Al Gore Weighs In On Trump Coup Talk - 07/27/2017
Published on Jul 27, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Thursday, July 27th 2017[, with an appearance by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, and Paul Joseph Watson hosting the fourth hour]: Scaramucci To Bust Leakers - White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is hunting down leakers saying, "The fish stinks from the head down." Lee Ann McAdoo joins today's show to cover the ongoing attempts to sabotage the Trump administration. Also, Amazon's Jeff Bezos is officially the richest person in the world.
Justice Dept. to Take On Affirmative Action in College Admissions AUG. 1, 2017 WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.” The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section [ https://www.justice.gov/crt/educational-opportunities-section ], which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities. The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minorities to university campuses. Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores. The project is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It follows other changes in Justice Department policy on voting rights, gay rights and police reforms. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-universities.html [and see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60232115 and (the many) following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=123731767 and preceding (and any future following), http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=123777222 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132394623 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132767361 and preceding and following (earlier this string)]
Missouri's "Jim Crow bill" leads NAACP to issue travel warning August 1, 2017 JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Americans used to getting warnings about the potential dangers of traveling overseas, but this summer, the NAACP put out an extraordinary warning [ http://www.monaacp.org/urgent-missouri-travel-advisory/ ] about travel here at home -- in Missouri. The warning advises "extreme caution," saying travelers could be subject to "discrimination and harassment." "They're legalizing discrimination in the state of Missouri," says attorney Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the NAACP in Missouri. He says a bill recently signed into law by Republican Gov. Eric Greitens is so dangerous that he has a name for it. "The Jim Crow bill," he says, "because in the eyes of the NAACP that's what it was breathing life into." [...] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/naacp-missouri-travel-warning-discrimination-harassment/ [with embedded video, and comments] [id.]
Historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?"
Human exhibits and sterilization: The fate of Afro Germans under Nazis Two survivors prepare food outside the barracks. The man on the right is thought to be Jean (Johnny) Voste, born in Belgian Congo -- the only black prisoner in Dachau. Date: May 1945. A new film aims to highlight a Nazi "secret" mission to sterilize hundreds of Afro German children. July 21, 2017 Updated July 26, 2017 http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/world/black-during-the-holocaust-rhineland-children-film/index.html [id.]
*
Here’s Why You Need To Know About The 1917 Silent Parade A silent march in New York to protest the police treatment of blacks during riots in East St. Louis in 1917. They marched down Fifth Avenue on that summer Saturday without saying a word. Women and children wore white while the men wore dark-colored suits. The anti-lynching protest became known as the first mass demonstration by African Americans. 07/28/2017 Updated July 28, 2017 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/1917-silent-parade_us_597b3c01e4b0da64e8789bff [with comments] [id.]
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The Timeline In the Case Against Trump | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ
Published on Jul 27, 2017 by GQ
Line up all the separate events and the truth is clear. And damning.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a news briefing. Acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Rob Hur also participate.
Half his tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive, shrill little cries, usually just after dawn.
By Peggy Noonan July 27, 2017 6:06 p.m. ET
The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.
He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.
Half the president’s tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive, shrill little cries, usually just after dawn. “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president.” The brutes. Actually they’ve been laboring to be loyal to him since Inauguration Day. “The Republicans never discuss how good their health care bill is.” True, but neither does Mr. Trump, who seems unsure of its content. In just the past two weeks, of the press, he complained: “Every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!” Journalists produce “highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting.” They are “DISTORTING DEMOCRACY.” They “fabricate the facts.”
It’s all whimpering accusation and finger-pointing: Nobody’s nice to me. Why don’t they appreciate me?
His public brutalizing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t strong, cool and deadly; it’s limp, lame and blubbery. “Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” he tweeted this week. Talk about projection.
He told the Journal’s Michael C. Bender he is disappointed in Mr. Sessions and doesn’t feel any particular loyalty toward him. “He was a senator, he looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, ‘What do I have to lose?’ And he endorsed me. So it’s not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement.” Actually, Mr. Sessions supported him early and put his personal credibility on the line. In Politico, John J. Pitney Jr. of Claremont McKenna College writes: “Loyalty is about strength. It is about sticking with a person, a cause, an idea or a country even when it is costly, difficult or unpopular.” A strong man does that. A weak one would unleash his resentments and derive sadistic pleasure from their unleashing.
The way American men used to like seeing themselves, the template they most admired, was the strong silent type celebrated in classic mid-20th century films—Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Henry Fonda. In time the style shifted, and we wound up with the nervous and chattery. More than a decade ago the producer and writer David Chase had his Tony Soprano mourn the disappearance of the old style: “What they didn’t know is once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings they wouldn’t be able to shut him up!” The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His characters couldn’t stop talking about their emotions, their resentments and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice and anger.
But he was a comic. It was funny. He wasn’t putting it out as a new template for maleness. Donald Trump now is like an unfunny Woody Allen.
Who needs a template for how to be a man? A lot of boys and young men, who’ve grown up in a culture confused about what men are and do. Who teaches them the real dignity and meaning of being a man? Mostly good fathers and teachers. Luckily Mr. Trump this week addressed the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, where he represented to them masculinity and the moral life.
“Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts, right?” But he overcame his natural reticence. We should change how we refer to Washington, he said: “We ought to change it from the word ‘swamp’ to perhaps ‘cesspool’ or perhaps to the word ‘sewer.’ ” Washington is not nice to him and is full of bad people. “As the Scout Law says, ‘A Scout is trustworthy, loyal—we could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that.” He then told them the apparently tragic story of a man who was once successful. “And in the end he failed, and he failed badly.”
Why should he inspire them, show personal height, weight and dignity, support our frail institutions? He has needs and wants—he is angry!—which supersede pesky, long-term objectives. Why put the amorphous hopes of the audience ahead of his own, more urgent needs?
His inability—not his refusal, but his inability—to embrace the public and rhetorical role of the presidency consistently and constructively is weak.
“It’s so easy to act presidential but that’s not gonna get it done,” Mr. Trump said the other night at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. That is the opposite of the truth. The truth, six months in, is that he is not presidential and is not getting it done. His mad, blubbery petulance isn’t working for him but against him. If he were presidential he’d be getting it done—building momentum, gaining support. He’d be over 50%, not under 40%. He’d have health care, and more.
We close with the observation that it’s all nonstop drama and queen-for-a-day inside this hothouse of a White House. Staffers speak in their common yet somehow colorful language of their wants, their complaints. The new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci, who in his debut came across as affable and in control of himself, went on CNN Thursday to show he’ll fit right in. He’s surrounded by “nefarious, backstabbing” leakers. “The fish stinks from the head down. But I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, and that’s me and the president.” He’s strong and well connected: “I’ve got buddies of mine in the FBI”; “ Sean Hannity is one of my closest friends.” He is constantly with the president, at dinner, on the phone, in the sauna snapping towels. I made that up. “The president and I would like to tell everybody we have a very, very good idea of who the leakers are.” Chief of Staff Reince Priebus better watch it. There are people in the White House who “think it is their job to save America from this president, okay?” So they leak. But we know who they are.
He seemed to think this diarrheic diatribe was professional, the kind of thing the big boys do with their media bros. But he came across as just another drama queen for this warring, riven, incontinent White House. As Scaramucci spoke, the historian Joshua Zeitz observed wonderingly, on Twitter: “It’s Team of Rivals but for morons.”
It is. And it stinks from the top.
Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble?
Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon
The new White House communications director has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Photograph by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post / Getty
He started by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. It escalated from there.
By Ryan Lizza July 27, 2017
On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted [ https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/890403810182561793 ], citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner [ http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344068-trump-dines-with-sean-hannity-scaramucci-at-white-house ] at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.
“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”
“Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. I again told him I couldn’t say. “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.”
I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. “I’ve asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period,” he said. “They won’t do it.” He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source.
“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)
“I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”
Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)
He reiterated that Priebus would resign soon, and he noted that he told Trump that he expected Priebus to launch a campaign against him. “He didn’t get the hint that I was reporting directly to the President,” he said. “And I said to the President here are the four or five things that he will do to me.” His list of allegations included leaking the Hannity dinner and the details from his financial-disclosure form.
I got the sense that Scaramucci’s campaign against leakers flows from his intense loyalty to Trump [ http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson-sorkin/when-anthony-scaramucci-fell-in-love-with-donald-trump ]. Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard him say a bad word about the President. “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me.
He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”
“What?” I interjected.
“Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” but then he changed the subject and returned to what he thought was the illegal leak of his financial-disclosure forms. I asked if the President knew all of this.
“Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.”
Scaramucci said he had to get going. “Yeah, let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.”
Minutes later, he tweeted, “In light of the leak of my financial info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45.” With the addition of Priebus’s Twitter handle, he was making public what he had just told me: that he believed Priebus was leaking information about him. The tweet quickly went viral.
Scaramucci seemed to have second thoughts. Within two hours he deleted the original tweet and posted a new one denying [ https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/890433477337915393 ] that he was targeting the chief of staff. “Wrong!” he said, adding a screenshot of an Axios article that said, “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI.” Scaramucci continued, “Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. @Reince45.”
A few hours later, I appeared on CNN to discuss the overnight drama. As I was talking about Scaramucci, he called into the show himself and referenced our conversation. He changed his story about Priebus. Instead of saying that he was trying to expose Priebus as a leaker, he said that the reason he mentioned Priebus in his deleted tweet was because he wanted to work together with Priebus to discover the leakers.
“He’s the chief of staff, he’s responsible for understanding and uncovering and helping me do that inside the White House, which is why I put that tweet out last night,” Scaramucci said [ http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/27/politics/scaramucci-new-day-transcript/index.html ], after noting that he had talked to me Wednesday night. He then made an argument that journalists were assuming that he was accusing Priebus because they know Priebus leaks to the press.
“When I put out a tweet, and I put Reince’s name in the tweet,” he said, “they’re all making the assumption that it’s him because journalists know who the leakers are. So, if Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that.”
Scaramucci then made a plea to viewers. “Let me tell you something about myself,” he said. “I am a straight shooter.”
John Kelly, Asserting Authority, Fires Anthony Scaramucci JULY 31, 2017 WASHINGTON — John F. Kelly, President Trump’s new chief of staff [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/us/politics/john-kelly-chief-of-staff-donald-trump.html ], firmly asserted his authority on his first day in the White House on Monday, telling aides he will impose military discipline on a free-for-all West Wing, and he underscored his intent by firing Anthony Scaramucci, the bombastic communications director, 10 days after he was hired. Mr. Scaramucci was forced out of his post, with the blessing of the president and his family, just days after unloading a crude verbal tirade [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/scaramucci-priebus-leaks.html ] against other members of the president’s staff, including Reince Priebus, Mr. Kelly’s beleaguered predecessor, and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist, in a conversation with a reporter for The New Yorker. Mr. Trump recruited Mr. Scaramucci as a tough-talking alter ego who would ferociously fight for him the way others had not. But “the Mooch,” as he likes to be known, quickly went too far [ http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon ], even in the eyes of a president who delights in pushing the boundaries of political and social decorum. As Mr. Kelly, a former four-star Marine general, began his first day on the job, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, announced that Mr. Scaramucci was out. “The president certainly felt that Anthony’s comments were inappropriate for a person in that position,” Ms. Sanders said. “He didn’t want to burden General Kelly, also, with that line of succession.” In a post to Twitter [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/891998881009061888 ] just hours before the announcement, Mr. Trump insisted that there had been “No WH chaos!” Yet even as he sought to reassure supporters that all was well, several administration aides fretted that the impetuous president and the disciplined Marine were already on a collision course that could ultimately doom the unlikely partnership. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/us/politics/trump-white-house-obamacare-health.html [with embedded video, and comments]
Anthony Scaramucci removed as White House communications director July 31, 2017 President Trump on Monday removed Anthony Scaramucci from his role as White House communications director just days after the New York financier was named to the job — a move made at the request of new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/31/anthony-scaramucci-removed-as-white-house-communications-director/ [with embedded video, and (over 6,000) comments]
Published on Jul 31, 2017 by Washington Post It's like the movie "Mean Girls," except it's at the White House. Stop trying to make Pickle happen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Gw77asW34 [with comments]
Mean Boys II: "The Mooch" is out and John Kelly is in, plus more drama in Trump's White House
President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Eugene Robinson July 27, 2017
The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.
I wish that were hyperbole. The problem is not just that President Trump is selfish, insecure, egotistical, ignorant and unserious. It is that he neither fully grasps nor minimally respects the concept of honor, without which our governing system falls apart. He believes “honorable” means “obsequious in the service of Trump.” He believes everyone else’s motives are as base as his.
The Trump administration is, indeed, like the court of some accidental monarch who is tragically unsuited for the duties of his throne. However long it persists, we must never allow ourselves to think of the Trump White House as anything but aberrant. We must fight for the norms of American governance lest we forget them in their absence.
It gets worse and worse. The past week has marked a succession of new lows.
Forget, for the moment, that Sessions was the first sitting U.S. senator to support Trump’s campaign, giving him credibility among conservatives. Forget also that Sessions is arguably having more success than any other Cabinet member in getting Trump’s agenda implemented. Those things aside, what kind of leader treats a lieutenant with such passive-aggressive obnoxiousness? Trump is too namby-pamby to look Sessions in the eye and say, “You’re fired.”
Trump has no respect for the rule of law. He is enraged that Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the election, and thus is not in a position to protect the House of Trump from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. According to the New York Times [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/us/politics/white-house-aides-think-trump-will-let-sessions-stay-for-now.html ], “Sharing the president’s frustration have been people in his family, some of whom have come under scrutiny in the Russia investigation.” I’m guessing that means the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Who elected them, by the way?
Trump seeks to govern by whim and fiat. On Wednesday morning, he used Twitter to announce a ban on transgender people serving in the military, surprising his own top military leaders. A Pentagon spokesman told reporters [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/transgender-military-trump-ban.html ] to ask the White House for details; White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters to ask the Pentagon. Was Trump trying to reignite the culture wars? Would the thousands of transgender individuals now serving in the military be purged? Was this actual policy or just a fit of indigestion?
Inside the mad king’s court, the internecine battles are becoming ever more brutal. Members of Trump’s inner circle seek his favor by leaking negative information about their rivals. This administration is more hostile to the media than any in recent memory but is also more eager to whisper juicy dirt about the ambitious courtier down the hall.
Trump’s new favorite, Anthony Scaramucci, struts around more like a chief of staff than a communications director, which is his nominal role. Late Wednesday night — after dining with Trump and his head cheerleader, Sean Hannity — Scaramucci took a metaphorical rapier to the actual chief of staff, Reince Priebus, by strongly hinting on Twitter that Priebus leaks to reporters. The next morning, Scaramucci told CNN [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/27/scaramucci-if-reince-wants-to-explain-that-hes-not-a-leaker-let-him-do-that/ ] that “if Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that.” And in a profanity-laden phone call to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci called Priebus “a f---ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
Why bring in Scaramucci? Because, I fear, the mad king is girding for war. Trump is reckless enough to fire Mueller if he digs too deeply into the business dealings of the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies.
What then? Will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) draft and push through a new special-prosecutor statute so that Mueller can quickly be reappointed? Will House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately open debate on articles of impeachment? Will we, the people, defend our democracy?
Do not become numb to the mad king’s outrages. The worst is yet to come.
President Trump sits alone at the Group of 20 summit. (Felipe Trueba/European Pressphoto Agency)
By Fareed Zakaria July 27, 2017
In London last week, I met a Nigerian man who succinctly expressed the reaction of much of the world to the United States these days. “Your country has gone crazy,” he said, with a mixture of outrage and amusement. “I’m from Africa. I know crazy, but I didn’t ever think I would see this in America.”
A sadder sentiment came from a young Irish woman I met in Dublin who went to Columbia University, founded a social enterprise and has lived in New York for nine years. “I’ve come to recognize that, as a European, I have very different values than America these days,” she said. “I realized that I have to come back to Europe, somewhere in Europe, to live and raise a family.”
The world has gone through bouts of anti-Americanism before. But this one feels very different. First, there is the sheer shock at what is going on, the bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump, which has been followed by an utterly chaotic presidency. The chaos is at such a fever pitch that one stalwart Republican, Karl Rove, described the president [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-long-can-the-trump-tumult-go-on-1501106914 ] this week as “vindictive, impulsive and shortsighted” and his public shaming of Attorney General Jeff Sessions as “unfair, unjustified, unseemly and stupid.” Kenneth Starr, the onetime grand inquisitor of President Bill Clinton, went further, calling Trump’s recent treatment of Sessions [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kenneth-starr-mr-president-please-cut-it-out/2017/07/26/b9af0c78-723e-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html ] “one of the most outrageous — and profoundly misguided — courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital.”
The most fascinating finding of the Pew survey was not that Trump is deeply unpopular (22 percent have confidence in him, compared with 64 percent who had confidence in Barack Obama at the end of his presidency). That was to be expected — but there are now alternatives. On the question of confidence in various leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin got slightly higher marks than Trump. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel got almost twice as much support as Trump. (Even in the United States [ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/05/on-world-affairs-most-g20-countries-more-confident-in-merkel-than-trump/ ], more respondents expressed confidence in Merkel than in Trump.) This says a lot about Trump, but it says as much about Merkel’s reputation and how far Germany has come since 1945.
Trump has managed to do something that Putin could not. He has unified Europe. As the continent faces the challenges of Trump, Brexit and populism, a funny thing has happened. Support for Europe [ http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/15/post-brexit-europeans-more-favorable-toward-eu/ ] among its residents has risen, and plans for deeper European integration are underway. If the Trump administration proceeds as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen. Under the combined leadership of Merkel and new French President Emmanuel Macron, Europe will adopt a more activist global agenda. Its economy has rebounded and is now growing [ https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21721557-first-quarter-figures-probably-overstate-gap-between-two ] as fast as that of the United States.
The most dismaying of Pew’s findings is that the drop in regard for America goes well beyond Trump. Sixty-four percent of the people surveyed expressed a favorable view of the United States at the end of the Obama presidency. That has fallen to 49 percent now. Even when U.S. foreign policy was unpopular, people around the world still believed in America — the place, the idea. This is less true today.
In 2008, I wrote a book about the emerging “Post-American World [ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393340384 ],” which, I noted at the start, was not about the decline of America but rather the rise of the rest. Amid the parochialism, ineptitude and sheer disarray of the Trump presidency, the post-American world is coming to fruition much faster than I ever expected.
Top military brass, Republicans in Congress, members of his own administration, and even the boy scouts are standing up to the president. Duration: 4:11
Bernie Sanders: GOP is now a right-wing extremist party
All In with Chris Hayes 7/27/17
The Republican Party is dominated by the far right wing 'Koch brothers ideology,' says Senator Bernie Sanders, and they want to eliminate 'every federal program passed in the last eighty years.' Duration: 6:20
After Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski voted against a motion to begin debating the Republican health care bill, members of the Trump administration responded with threats against residents of her state. Duration: 1:25
Hirono: I am now an American with a pre-existing condition
All In with Chris Hayes 7/27/17
Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who was recently diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer, shares her perspective on the fight over health care reform. Duration: 4:13
Andrea Mitchell on being a female journalist in 1979
All In with Chris Hayes 7/27/17
Thing 1/Thing 2: NBC News veteran Andrea Mitchell tells Seth Meyers a remarkable story about her experience covering the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster – parental discretion advised. Duration: 2:25
White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci uses 'colorful' language in a tirade against Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Duration: 1:56
GOP deploys counter narrative amid continued Trump disgrace
The Rachel Maddow Show 7/27/17
Rachel Maddow reports on the latest embarrassing spectacle from the Donald Trump administration and points out the facets of a solidifying Republican counter narrative that aims to discredit the FBI and the Trump Russia investigation. Duration: 20:19
Expert: 'Nothing can stop Bobby Mueller' despite Trump's efforts
The Rachel Maddow Show 7/27/17
Tim Weiner, historian of the FBI and CIA, talks with Rachel Maddow about the Republican effort to discredit the FBI and the Trump Russia investigation, and what Donald Trump doesn't understand about the FBI. Duration: 7:50
Franken: GOP bill opposite of what Trump voters were promised
The Rachel Maddow Show 7/27/17
Senator Al Franken talks with Rachel Maddow about the disastrous health/tax bill Senate Republicans are struggling to jam through to passage. Duration: 5:03
Trump employs Christie-style bully politics in health bill push
The Rachel Maddow Show 7/27/17
Rachel Maddow points out the parallels between the bully tactics at the root of the Bridgegate scandal and the pressure Donald Trump is trying to put on Senator Lisa Murkowski by threatening Alaska, noting also that Chris Christie's former campaign manager now works as Trump's political director. Duration: 4:48
Rachel Maddow gives viewers a preview of some of Richard Engel's reporting from Russia to air on Friday, 7/29 at 9pm ET as the latest installment of On Assignment with Richard Engel. Duration: 2:28
Lawrence: Scaramucci a pass-fail moment for Trump's judgment
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 7/27/17
Before even officially becoming Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci went on a threatening, vulgar tirade, attacking fellow White House aides and "leakers." Lawrence O'Donnell argues this is a test—if Trump keeps Scaramucci, his presidency may never recover. Duration: 11:32
Earnest: Scaramucci himself is a problem for White House
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 7/27/17
Obama Press Secretary Josh Earnest and Bush speechwriter David Frum join Lawrence O'Donnell to explain the deficiencies of the Trump communications team and how Anthony Scaramucci is not only ill-suited to his new role, but also doing far more harm than good. Duration: 9:55
Graham bill would stop Trump from firing Special Counsel Mueller
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 7/27/17
Jeff Sessions is speaking out about being under public attack by Trump over the Russia investigation and Lindsey Graham has issued a warning to the president about the consequences of firing the attorney general. Paul Butler and Ron Klain join Lawrence O'Donnell. Duration: 5:16
Trump reportedly okayed Scaramucci's attacks on Reince Priebus
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 7/27/17
The war in the White House got public and it got ugly with Anthony Scaramucci's profanity filled interview with one reporter. Is the White House becoming too dysfunctional to get anything done? Our panel reacts. Duration: 14:24
Jeff Sessions responds after days of attacks from Pres. Trump
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 7/27/17
After days of being called 'beleaguered' and 'very weak' by his boss Pres. Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions responds - and our panel reacts. Duration: 8:07
Fmr. GOP Rep on health care vote: 'Terrible' night for GOP
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 7/27/17
As the Senate readies for a late night vote to try to pass a so-called 'skinny repeal' of Obamacare, former members of Congress David Jolly (R-FL) & Donna Edwards (D-MD) join to discuss. Duration: 3:01
Turmoil in the Trump Administration: The Daily Show
Published on Jul 27, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci lashes out at his coworkers, and President Trump escalates his verbal attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Samantha Bee Could Leap Into Justin Trudeau's Arms At Any Moment
Published on Jul 28, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
'Full Frontal' host Samantha Bee has dual citizenship, and yet has bravely chosen to resist Trump rather than returning to the welcoming arms of Justin Trudeau.
[originally aired July 27, 2017 (U.S. central time)]
Scaramucci Lashes Out, GOP Scrambles on Health Care: A Closer Look
Published on Jul 27, 2017 by Late Night with Seth Meyers
Seth takes a closer look at the backlash the Trump White House continues to face over the President's cruel and sudden decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
this is part 13 of a 14-part post which proceeds (point arising on the given) day by (point arising on the given) day from July 15, 2017 through July 28, 2017 -- the preceding part is the post to which this is a reply; the concluding part 14 is a reply to this post -- the following 'see also (linked in)' listing, updated for intervening posts along the way, is common to all 14 parts
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (any future other) following, see also (linked in):
Still reeling from the demise of her Spicey baked potato, Chelsea invited his replacement, the freshly tarted-up Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Fortune Feimster), to talk about her big new gig.
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