Did the 3 university presidents fall into "Ms. Stefanik's prosecutorial trap"?

I'm reading "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

The NYT writer, Annie Karni, is characterizing an interview with Stefanik:

"Ms. Stefanik’s aggressive appeals to the far right typically delight Republican hard-liners. But in the hearing, Ms. Stefanik achieved the unthinkable..."

"... prompting many Democrats and detractors of Mr. Trump to concede that an ideological culture warrior with whom they agree on nothing else was, in this case, right. Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on social media that he was 'no fan' of Ms. Stefanik. But, he added: 'I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.'... That Ms. Stefanik emerged as the voice of reason in the hearing was a sobering thought for many of her detractors. More than any other member of Congress, Ms. Stefanik represents to Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans the worst of what happened to the G.O.P. under the sway of Mr. Trump...."

Writes Annie Karni, in "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

Where the university presidents went wrong was not in defending pure speech and distinguishing pure speech from conduct. That was good. Their mistake was the rote repetition of stock phrases in place of real engagement about the line between speech and conduct. There should have been a frank discussion of whether the universities draw the same line for anti-Semitic speech that they draw for speech that is hostile to other groups, such as black people.

I think that by "conduct," the presidents meant the kind of speech that is aimed at individuals and constitutes a true threat or an incitement to imminent violence. These presidents seemed unable or unwilling to talk about freedom of speech and bigotry. I suspect that they didn't dare risk speaking substantively because either they really don't understand the law and philosophy of freedom of speech — a shameful deficiency in a university president! — or because they know the facts are against them and they have not been maintaining the strong free-speech position that they want to take now — now that the offensive speech is hateful toward Jews.

Biden "will often snap" — says the NYT, based on interviews with "more than two dozen current and former Biden associates."

I'm reading "Beneath Joe Biden’s Folksy Demeanor, a Short Fuse and an Obsession With Details/As Mr. Biden settles into the office he has chased for more than three decades, aides say he demands hours of debate from scores of policy experts" by Michael D. Shear, Katie Rogers and Annie Karni. 

Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic “journey” before arriving at a conclusion. Those trips are often difficult for his advisers, who are peppered with sometimes obscure questions. Avoiding Mr. Biden’s ire during one of his decision-making seminars means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity.

Let’s talk plain English here, he will often snap....

On policy issues, Mr. Biden, 78, takes days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others. It is a method of governing that can feel at odds with the urgency of a country still reeling from a pandemic and an economy struggling to recover..... Those closest to him say Mr. Biden is unwilling, or unable, to skip the routine....

Mr. Biden is gripped by a sense of urgency that leaves him prone to flares of impatience, according to numerous people who regularly interact with him...

So... urgent and not urgent, simultaneously?

[S]everal people familiar with the president’s decision-making style said Mr. Biden was quick to cut off conversations.

So... long conversational journeys but also cutting off conversation? I'm not really seeing a big problem here. The President should control when things go long or need to be cut short. It's only a problem if he's reacting based on his temper rather than his degree of understanding. 

Three people who work closely with him said he even occasionally hangs up the phone on someone who he thinks is wasting his time.

Who cares?!

Most described Mr. Biden as having little patience for advisers who cannot field his many questions.

Fine!

“You become so hyperprepared,” said Dylan Loewe, a former speechwriter for Mr. Biden. “‘I’ve got to answer every conceivable question he can come up with.’”...

So? Well, maybe now I'm suspecting the NYT of making a bullshit show of critiquing him when they're really praising him.

“He hates blandishing fast-talk that sounds like double speak,” said Chris Jennings, a former health policy aide who engaged frequently with Mr. Biden when he was vice president. “Doesn’t trust it, and he’s certain voters loathe it.”...

Hmm. My hypothesis gathers steam. 

If you keep going in this article, you'll get to stuff about what he and Dr. Jill eat: "vanilla chocolate chip Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Special K cereal, one bunch of red grapes, sliced cheese, six eggs, sliced bread, one tomato from the garden, and at least two apples on hand at all times." Biden drinks Orange Gatorade, and Jill is “an oenophile of the first degree.”

That's like something W.C. Fields would say for a laugh: "an oenophile of the first degree."

"Castor is asking Taylor to essentially speak to Trump’s mindset. Taylor resists doing so, saying, 'I don’t know' more than once."

"It’s subtle right now, Maggie, but this is a key to the Republican defense. Taylor cannot speak to his mindset because he is not a first-hand witness to the president’s statements or actions, per se"/"And Maggie, asking about Trump’s mindset after Republicans have pointed out, accurately, that Taylor never actually spoke with Trump"/... "Taylor looks bewildered every time Castor asks a question. For folks not watching this, it loses something to describe what’s taking place. Part of understanding the interactions is seeing Taylor’s pauses after Castor asks questions as he seems to be trying to understand what Castor is asking."

From the NYT live commentary running next to the live video feed from the impeachment hearing, where William Taylor, "the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine," is the first witness.

Castor is Steve Castor, House Intelligence Committee Counsel for the minority, who is asking questions on behalf of the GOP. See "Meet Steve Castor, the attorney handling questioning for GOP during impeachment hearings."

UPDATE: From one of the NYT commentators, Kenneth Vogel: "A small victory for Republicans: George Kent testifies that Ukrainian prosecutors 'should' investigate the oligarch owner of Burisma, the gas company that paid Hunter Biden, for possibly paying a bribe to kill an investigation in 2015."

It's a "small" victory because it's "for Republicans." If it were "for Democrats," it would be a mind-blowing bombshell.

AND: Again, from the NYT commentators: White House correspondent Annie Karni says, "Jordan is, at least, a more energetic questioner than the lawyer Castor." I'm not following this enough to get the "at least." Then White House correspondent Peter Baker responds with, "This aggressive, prosecutorial style by Jordan is just what Trump wants to see in his defenders." Seems like Baker is puffing for Jordan, and it's hilarious that he knows "just what" is in Trump's head. So much of this whole enterprise is about figuring out what's in Trump's head. Why do some people assume they know? I instinctively mistrust these people who purport to know and (obviously) won't acknowledge if they are self-aware enough to know that they're talking about something they cannot know.

MORE: I get the "at least" now. Jordan is a Republican. So Baker isn't "puffing for Jordan," he is putting him down. I didn't understand that before. I stumbled into understanding because I follow Matt Gaetz on Twitter. You can see Jordan's "aggressive, prosecutorial style" here:

Their star witness knows nothing. #ImpeachmentHearings @Jim_Jordan pic.twitter.com/djTTLkvNZo

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) November 13, 2019

"Despite weeks of hype from the president and his campaign, the official kickoff rally for a re-election campaign that he has been running since the day he took office was, in the end, just another rally."

"Mr. Trump had no new campaign message to unveil. He had no new theory of the case to mount against any of his potential opponents. He instead spent much of his time relitigating his outrage against Hillary Clinton’s email server, promising that he would build a wall that was 'stronger, bigger, better and cheaper' and talking about the 'Russia hoax.' When Mr. Trump seemed to sense that the crowd’s energy was sagging, he quickly started polling attendees about what campaign slogan he should use."

That's Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni in "What We Learned From Trump’s Orlando Rally" (NYT), and I agree. I looked forward to the big announcement rally, and I mostly zoned out because I've watched many Trump rallies and this was just another one. I recognized all the riffs.

The NYT article is an 8-point list of observations. What I quoted above was #1: "It was just a rally."

ADDED: It's conceivable that Trump is engaging in some devious trickery, seeming as though he's got nothing new and he'll just be running on autopilot. Maybe he's got all new stuff — or will have it — and he's waiting to drop it when the time is right, and that's not now. If he puts out the new material now, 20 Democratic candidates will rip it apart, and the Democratic race will be about their capacity to counter what will be his actual 2020 campaign. If he withholds it, the Democrats will have less to talk about, and they'll pick their nominee based on who's best suited to fight the Trump of the past.

"Mark Penn, Ex-Clinton Loyalist, Visits Trump, and Democrats Are Not Pleased."

That's the headline for a column by Annie Karni in the NYT. Excerpt:

As Democrats have moved to the left, Mr. Penn, with his centrist politics, has become alienated from a party in which he once reigned as a winning pollster and is a frequent guest on Fox News and the author of op-ed articles criticizing the special counsel’s investigation as a “partisan, open-ended inquisition.” He has even adopted the president’s term “deep state” to describe people he views as Democratic operatives sabotaging the Trump administration from within the government....

In an email, Mr. Penn played down the significance of the visit.... “Despite my misgivings about the Mueller investigation, let me be clear as a lifelong Democrat under no circumstances would I work paid or unpaid for President Trump nor was this meeting about that in any way.”...

In an interview with Politico Magazine last year, Mr. Penn said that as a White House adviser during Ken Starr’s investigation into Mr. Clinton, he saw up close the emotional damage that a special counsel can wreak on a president and on a functional White House. And he said he saw little difference in how the investigation affected Mr. Clinton then and Mr. Trump now — even though Mr. Clinton never tweeted the words “Witch Hunt!”

“The Clintons didn’t put their emotions on Twitter, but trust me, they had them, and they weren’t particularly different from Trump’s,” he said....

"But while my feminist sensibilities make me wary of suggesting that Ginni Thomas should not be completely free to embrace her causes and live her life..."

"... there’s something troublesome about the unbounded nature of her public advocacy, at least for those of us who still care about the Supreme Court.... As a Supreme Court spouse, Ginni Thomas has always been different. In November 1991, weeks after her husband’s apocalyptic confirmation hearing, she gave an interview to People magazine, appearing on the cover in her husband’s embrace with the headline, 'How We Survived.' The disappearing act of other Supreme Court spouses is not for Ms. Thomas. Justice Stephen Breyer’s wife, Joanna, a psychotherapist who works with children with cancer, stayed in Cambridge, Mass., to continue her career while her husband commuted from Washington on weekends. Martin Ginsburg gave up law practice when his wife first became a judge, embarking on a new career as a law professor....  [Ginni Thomas has] broken no rules except the rules of good taste. What she’s violated are longstanding norms of behavior. And in an age when nearly every norm is being shredded, that makes her the perfect Supreme Court spouse for our time."

That's Linda Greenhouse in "Family Ties at the Supreme Court/Do the political activities of Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife cross a line?" (NYT).

What did Ginni Thomas do exactly? Greenhouse links to "Trump Meets With Hard-Right Group Led by Ginni Thomas" by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni (NYT). Excerpt:

President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events....

It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a different branch of government....

I'm skeptical about whether these "members of the group" actually "denounced transgender people and women serving in the military." It seems much more likely that they denounced some policies relating to these groups, not the human beings themselves. One could think transgenders shouldn't be in the military and women shouldn't be in combat without being hostile to these individuals. Indeed, one could hate heterosexual men and believe they absolutely do belong in the frontlines of military duty.

My 7 favorite phrases from the Politico article "Trump offers Xi steak, not a Big Mac, at Mar-a-Lago."

Here's the article, by Annie Karni, about Trump's encounter yesterday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Here's my list.

7. "... something in between an official East Room black tie gala and a stop for Big Macs on the side of the road."

6. "Trump’s known favorites, dry-aged steak and whipped potatoes."

5. "golf... (frowned on by the Chinese Communist Party as a rich man's sport)."

4. "The first lady appeared to be enjoying a glass of red wine, while the Chinese first lady, Peng Liyuan, sipped tea."

3. Sen. John McCain said... “an ideal setting for real serious negotiations has been Camp David”...

2. "The choice of venue lent him the gilded, salmon-colored backdrop of his private resort to satisfy a world leader who places a high value on ceremony."

1. "We had a long discussion already and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing."