"BuzzFeed News’s reporting helped popularize the term to describe a new breed of fraudsters. But the dossier is a real document that has been influencing senior officials, lawmakers, intelligence agencies and, potentially, the new commander in chief. Nobody should fall for this attempt to turn the press on itself by making a reasonable debate about transparency into a media civil war. News organizations should instead consider this reality: Our audience inhabits a complex, polluted information environment; our role is to help them navigate it — not to pretend it doesn’t exist. The need to show our work and earn trust has never been more important, since once reliable official sources are peddling 'alternative facts' — as the White House press secretary did Saturday."
The term "alternative facts" came not from the press secretary, but from Kellyanne Conway, in a "Meet the Press" interview with Chuck Todd that I described as a 9-round fight, here. Chuck Todd kept asking Conway "why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood?"
And then we get the sound bite of the whole morning, as she attempts, at long last, to refute Todd's idea that it was a "provable falsehood":
What-- You're saying it's a falsehood. And they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains--
Todd sees the gem he has caused to come into existence and plucks it out to hold in his hand and admire:
Wait a minute-- Alternative facts?
Conway tries to plow on, but he repeats the Conway's terrible phrase:
Alternative facts?... Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.
In context and read sympathetically, "alternative facts" doesn't mean that there are competing versions of the truth and you can refer to all of them as "facts."
Actually, that wouldn't bother me that much, because it would mean that the word "facts" was being used to mean "assertions of fact." Chuck Todd used the word "litigating," and in litigation there are factual issues, and litigants try to get the "fact-finder" to accept their assertions of fact as the facts. If one litigant states a fact — X is true — the other litigant may say X is not true. It would be awkward but understandable to call X and not-X "alternative facts."
But what I think Conway meant was that there are many different factual issues, and some people choose to forefront one factual issue — such as the size of the crowd at the Inauguration — when there are many other factual issues that could have been selected as the main story. There are "alternatives" in that you don't have to make such a big deal out of that one thing, and you could emphasize something else. The "alternative facts" were all the other things that Trump did, good things, that would have put him in a good light, and the media is criticized for picking out the fact that diminished Trump.
But I don't think Spicer will last too long. He's too conspicuously uncomfortable and inept at the job. I don't think what he needed to say was necessarily an outright lie, and he could have developed a better way of casting doubt on the assertions about the Inauguration crowd size. If Spicer needs to resign, it's not because he "lied" but because he isn't wily and shameless enough to dance with truth and fiction in the usual style.
UPDATE: I'm listening to Spicer's news briefing this afternoon, and he seems fine.
The progressive Minnesota Democrat was the breakout star during a packed week of [confirmation] hearings.... Franken, who was elected in 2008, has largely kept his head down in the upper chamber, focusing on legislative duties and representing his constituents.
Because he couldn't step/stomp on Obama, Franken was caged. The comedian — who came from TV to become a politician — suddenly has a President — who came from TV to become a politician — whom he can attack. What fabulous liberation!
And I'm pretty sure that Trump would be delighted to have Franken as his nemesis. We'll see who's the better comedian-politician.
“It’s very clear now that he is trying to raise his profile and position himself as a leading critic of Donald Trump,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who was active in Franken’s recount in 2008. “After watching him skillfully interrogate some of the Trump nominees in recent days, he’s clearly angling to mix it up much more so than he has in the past.”
Here's an example of Franken's newly unleashed prowess:
At former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's hearing to be Energy secretary, Perry referred to an earlier meeting with Franken by saying that he “hope[s] you are as fun on the dais as you were on your couch.”
The hearing room erupted in laughter, and Franken asked Perry to rephrase. “Please. Please. Oh my lord,” Franken said. Once the laughter subsided, Franken pressed Trump’s Energy secretary nominee about his opinion on climate change.
Rick Perry was the funnier comedian there, unless you think he doesn't notice his own double entendre. If you think he doesn't, you're assuming that the other side is dumb, an easy target. I think Texas politicians can rope you in with that. Watch out, Minnesotans.
That withdrawal is consistent with campaign promises Trump made. The real estate mogul ran on a platform of anti-globalization policies and vowing to create fairer trade deals for American workers.
ADDED: What was Hillary Clinton's position on the TPP? Can you remember? When the question occurred to me, I knew I'd have to look it up, looking it up, I feel relief that I don't have to click through and try to absorb the complicated, changeable, unbelievable position/positions/whatever-it-was:
“No one would have thought when the Constitution was written that paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” Sheri A. Dillon, a partner at Morgan Lewis, said at a news conference this month...
“If you think other countries are not going to try to leverage relationships with Trump’s companies to influence trade or military policy, that is naïve,” [said Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University law professor and former congressional candidate who has been studying and writing about the Emoluments Clause for nearly a decade].
Quite apart from the substantive merits of the claim, it's hard to see how there are plaintiffs with standing to sue. How does the money paid in rent and hotel bills to the Trump organization cause concrete and particularized injury to anyone? You could say we are all injured by the possibility that commercial activities could influence the President's decisions, but that's the sort of generalized grievance that isn't enough.
But the filing of the lawsuit brings attention to the legal argument, which bolsters the political argument that the risk of influence is bad and should be eliminated. And in the end, almost certainly, the matter will be resolved in the political sphere and not the courts.
Here's the "Meet the Press" transcript from this morning. Chuck Todd doggedly tried to embarrass Conway over the Press Secretary's statements about the crowd size at the Inauguration. Let's count how many times Todd asked the question and see how Conway fought back every way she could. Todd I think had great material, and Kellyanne had a hard-to-defend position, but she never weakened.
Round 1: Todd begins with a statement that is clearly very well prepared down to the last word:
I'm curious why President Trump chose yesterday to send out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood when it comes to a small and petty thing like inaugural crowd size.
But it needs to be a question, so he tags on: "I guess my question to you is why do that?"
Conway gives a very long answer, pointing to other things Trump did yesterday, the victory in election, the relative unimportance of crowd size (when Todd himself just called it trivial), the general unfairness of the press toward Trump, the high television ratings for the inauguration, the prediction of rain. None of this answers the question, for which Conway should have been prepared. She talks vigorously, but this was pure filibuster. Todd wins Round 1.
Round 2: Todd agrees with her on the point that she actually agreed with him about, the relative unimportance of the crowd size. So why send the press secretary out — the first time the public sees him in action — "to utter a provable falsehood" on this unimportant subject?
Instead of answering the question, Conway goes into offense:
A James Baldwin quote* on an excellent painted placard at yesterday's Women's March in Manhattan, caught in an excellent photograph by my son John Althouse Cohen.
2 more photographs by John here, one of police interacting respectfully with the crowd and one of a little boy with a sign that reads "Too young to vote/But not too young to care."
______________________
* That's an abbreviated version of the quote. Here's the extended version, from "No Name in the Street" (1972), is:
Well, if one really wishes to know
how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the
policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the
middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need
the law's protection most! — and listens to their testimony. Ask any
Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person — ask the
wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know,
not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any
love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that
ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can
have.
I saw bits of this speech yesterday and heard it critiqued by freakily emotive commentators on CNN. I had to look away. I'm up for watching/reading the whole thing now. Here's the full transcript. I'm going to read it and live-blog my reactions.
Well. I want to thank everybody. Very, very special people. And it is true: this is my first stop.
I don't remember seeing other Presidents speak in this location. Clearly, Trump intends the very fact of his appearance here to convey meaning.
Officially. We’re not talking about the balls, and we’re not talking about even the speeches. Although, they did treat me nicely on that speech yesterday [laughter]. I always call them “the dishonest media”, but they treated me nicely.
Trump immediately distracted himself. This seems almost like the way many speakers tell a joke or anecdote before getting to the real topic. Trump is warming himself up — and drawing the crowd in collusively — by voicing what is always between the lines: The press won't be fair to him. The press is listening to this speech, and hearing the challenge: I don't think you can be fair. And I don't just want fairness. I want niceness. If you won't give me good press, I'm going to push the dishonest media meme.
He gets into and then out of his sidetrack quickly. Perhaps it's a device to get us to lock into attention. He's the one that does distractions for you, so your mind doesn't wander. If you wander, you'll get confused. And if you do get confused, you might blame him. That's what his opponents do. His digressions drive them mad. He's accused of serving a "word salad" and of lacking any attention span. But he's keeping track. He cuts in a side issue and jumps back to continue where he left off:
But, I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the Intelligence Community and the CIA than Donald Trump. [applause]. There’s Nobody. Nobody. And the wall behind me is very very special. We’ve been touring for quite a while. And I’ll tell you what: twenty … nine? I can’t believe it.. No. Twenty eight. We’ve got to reduce it. That’s amazing.
Yikes! He got back to the topic only to digress again — and it sounds really incoherent. I think the 29/28 may refer to the number of months he's been touring.
And we really appreciate it what you've done in terms of showing us something very special. And your whole group. These are really special, amazing people. Very, very few people could do the job you people do. And I want to just let you know: I am so behind you.
That's the message, the message already delivered by the choice of location, repeated in a few simple words. And then he repeats the verbal message, with a tinge of criticism to his predecessor:
And I know, maybe sometimes, you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted.
And he repeats it again as a self-effacing joke:
And you’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you’re going to say “please don’t give us so much backing”. [laughter] “Mr President, please, we don’t need that much backing”.
Returning to seriousness, he repeats it again:
But you’re going to have that. And I think everybody in this room knows it.
He's now done all that he showed up to do, I believe, and has maxed out the repetitions of the message. He supports the CIA. Noted.
Now what can he talk about?
You know, the military, and the law-enforcement generally speaking, -- but, all of it -- but the military, gave us tremendous percentages of votes.
Oh, why did I even have to ask?! His go-to conversational topic is his great, great victory in the election:
We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military and probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. [laughter] But I would guarantee a big portion. Because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks. We’re all on the same wavelength. [applause] All right? [pointing to the crowd] He knows. Took Brian about 30 seconds to figure that one out, right? Because we know. We’re on the same wavelength.
That's not really the right material for the location, and I think he knows it. He's scanning the mental files for something appropriate to say, something Trumpropriate.
We’re going to do great things. We’re going to do great things.
Say it twice!
We’ve been fighting these wars for longer than any wars we’ve ever fought. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained.
Aha:
We have to get rid of ISIS. We have to get rid of ISIS.
Say it twice!
We have no choice. [applause]
The go-to argument that is no argument.
Radical Islamic terrorism - and I said it yesterday - has to be eradicated.
He loves to say the phrase that Barack Obama would not say. He loves to say it and then stop and look at his having said it and comment that he has said it.
Just off the face of the Earth. This is evil. This is evil.
Say it twice!
And you know, I can understand the other side. We can all understand the other side.
Say it twice! You know, this claim to understand other perspectives — or at least one other perspective — is out of whack with reliance on the argument-that-is-not-an-argument we have no choice.
There can be wars between countries. There can be wars. You can understand what happened. This is something nobody could even understand.
Radical divergence from the say-it-twice rule of Trump rhetoric: Say it and then say exactly the opposite with equal conviction as if you haven't contradicted yourself.
But you know me. I am almost always eager to attempt a sympathetic reading to get some perspective on something that sounds so wrong. Here's me, doing that: Trump seems to have meant that with some wars, both sides have reasons to fight, and it's complicated figuring out what America ought to do, but radical Islamic terrorism is simply plain evil, so there's nothing to understand: Just eradicate what is plainly evil.
This is a level of evil that we haven’t seen. You’re going to go to it, and you’re going to do a phenomenal job. But we’re going to end it. It’s time. It’s time right now to end it.
The CIA has a job to do. But is "end it" really their job? Isn't Trump misunderstanding what they do? Or is he speaking so simply that it doesn't feel enough like an offer of understanding to warrant the label "misunderstanding"?
He finds a new topic in his mental file: The new CIA director:
You have somebody coming on who is extraordinary.
And he's immediately drifting into other territory:
You know for the different positions, of secretary of this and secretary of that and all of these great positions, I’d see five, six, seven, eight people. And we had a great transition. We had an amazing team of talent.
Great, great, amazing.
And by the way, General Flynn is right over here. Put up your hand, Mike. What a good guy [applause]
Compliments. Compliments. Everybody loves compliments. Let's see, who else can I compliment?
And Reince, and my whole group. Reince. You know Reince? They don’t care about Reince.
He knows this isn't a good topic! Why is he telling the CIA about Reince Preibus? They don’t care about Reince. Ah, what the hell? It's a thing to talk about and he hasn't talked long enough yet.
He’s like, this political guy that turned out to be a superstar, right? We don’t have to talk about Reince. But, we did. We had just such a tremendous, tremendous success. So when I’m interviewing all of these candidates that Reince and his whole group is putting in front, it went very, very quickly, and in this case went so quickly. Because I would see six or seven or eight for secretary of agriculture, who we just named the other day.
Suddenly, it's not about Reince anymore. It's about agriculture. He's telling the CIA about the Secretary of Agriculture!
Sunny [sic] Perdue. Former Governor of Georgia. Fantastic guy. But I’d see six, seven, eight people for a certain position. Everybody wanted it.
It's like he's talking in his sleep, babbling impressionistic memories of the last few weeks. Maybe this will get to why Flynn Pompeo* is great. Hang on.
But I met Mike Pompeo, and he was the only guy I met. I didn’t want to meet anybody else. I said “cancel everybody else”. Cancel. Now he was approved, essentially. But they’re doing a little political games with me.
"They" are the Democrats in the Senate, I assume. But this is what I mean about babbling. There's a positive side to this: He gives us the feeling that we are now inside his head, seeing his thoughts. But there's something almost insane about the assumption we know what the references are. Pronouns without antecedents? A disembodied "they" is playing games with him. He makes it so easy for his antagonists to cry: Paranoid!
You know, he was one of the three.
The three? The three what? I have to try to construct a thought that he thought that I was not privy too, despite the feeling of being inside his brain.
Now, last night, as you know, General Mattis - fantastic guy - and General Kelly got approved [applause] And Mike Pompeo was supposed to be in that group; it was going to be the three of them.
Okay. The three nominees the Senate was going to vote to confirm on Friday.
Can you imagine? All of these guys. People respect … they respect that military sense. All my political people? They’re not doing so well. The political people aren’t doing so well…
See? It's like he's talking in his sleep! He's trying to say that the nominees with a military background are advancing in the confirmation process more quickly than the ones with a political background, such as Mike Pompeo.
... but you … We’re going to get them all through. But some will take a little bit longer than others.
He finally gets back to the CIA-appropriate material — Mike Flynn Pompeo*:
But Mike was literally -- I had a group of, what, we had nine different people? -- Now. I must say, I didn’t mind cancelling eight appointments. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
That is, there were 9 people set to interview for CIA director, and he interviewed the first one, and decided that's the guy. Tough luck to you other 8.
But I met him, and I said “he is so good”. Number one in his class at West Point. Now, I know a lot about West Point. I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics.
Oh, no. Here it comes:
In fact, every time I say, I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many different ways academically. He was an academic genius.
Had to say that. Just had to say that. And then you know what comes next? He must add an assertion about his own genetic gift:
And then they say: “is Donald Trump an intellectual?” Trust me. I’m like a smart person....
He snaps out of the digression:
And I recognized immediately. So he was Number 1 at West Point. And he was also essentially number 1 at Harvard Law School. And then he decided to go into the military. And he ran for Congress. And everything he’s done has been a home run. People like him. But much more importantly to me, everybody respects him.
When I told Paul Ryan that I want to do this, I would say, he may be the only person that was not totally thrilled, right, Mike? Because he said “I don’t want to lose this guy."
You will be getting a total star.
A star? And when you’re a star... you can do anything.
You going to be getting a total gem. He is a gem.
Say it twice!
And I just …. [applause] You’ll see. You’ll see. And many of you know him anyway. But you’re going to see. And again: we have some great people going, but this one is something, going to be very special, because this is one of -- if I had to name the most important, this would certainly be, perhaps, you know, in certain ways, you could even say my most important. You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing. And the generals are wonderful and the fighting is wonderful.
Wonderful wonderful.
But if you give them the right direction? Boy, does the fighting become easier. And boy do we lose so fewer lives, and win so … quickly.
I know he just means to compliment everyone and give respect to the lower-downs and the higher-ups. But this is scarily babbly when he's talking about human lives.
And that’s what we have to do. We have to start winning again.
A familiar line circled around to the front of the brain and flew out. Yeah, we need to win wars. But forget that, Trump wants to muse about when he was young...
You know what? When I was young, And when I was … of course, I feel young.
And his digression provoked a digression. He suddenly doesn't want to talk about when he was young but how young he feels today:
I feel like I’m 30. 35. 39. [laughter]. Somebody said “are you young?” I said “I think I’m young."
Somebody said something, and then I said something and then....
You know, I was stopping when we were in the final month of that campaign.
And now we're back at the original digression, the story of the campaign.
Four stops, five stops. Seven stops. Speeches -- speeches -- in front of twenty five, thirty thousand people. Fifteen thousand, nineteen thousand, from stop to stop.
Numbers numbers numbers. Say some numbers. And they add up to...
I feel young.
Back to the when I was young digression:
But when I was young -- and I think we’re all sort of young -- when I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars. At a certain age I remember hearing from one of my instructors “The United States has never lost a war.”
Oh, I remember hearing that live yesterday. I remember remembering that I always heard "The United States has never lost a war." And the other thing I remember remembering yesterday when Trump was remembering always hearing "The United States has never lost a war" is how important that perfect record was in getting us deeper and deeper into the hell of Vietnam. If Trump remembers that, he doesn't say it.
And then, after that, it’s like, we haven’t won anything. We don’t win anymore.
The campaign slogan cycles to the front of the brain again. And then another old idea:
The old expression: “to the victor belong the spoils” - you remember? You always used to say “keep the oil”. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you. When we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said: “In addition to that, keep the oil”.
Let's see what Mike thinks about that:
Now I said it for economic reasons, but if you think about, Mike, if we kept the oil we would probably wouldn’t have ISIS, because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. [laughter] Maybe we’ll have another chance. But the fact is: we should’ve kept the oil.
Mike doesn't get to engage on this interesting policy question, but maybe Trump and Flynn have talked about keeping the oil.
Trump gets back to his core message, suggesting he's bringing this speech in for a landing:
I believe that this group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country towards making us safe, towards making us winners again. Towards ending all of the problems -- we have so many problems that are interrelated that we don’t even think of, but interrelated -- to the kind of havoc and fear that this sick group of people has caused.
So I can only say that I am with you 1000%.
Numbers. Fake numbers. Fake on their face. It's okay. Numbers are beautiful. Fantastic. I love numbers!
And the reason you’re my first stop is that as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. [laughter, applause]
I'm having deja vu.
And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the Intelligence Community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number 1 stop is exactly the opposite. Exactly. And they understand that too.
Ah, this connects 2 topics that seemed disconnected at the beginning of the speech. But he drops that to bring in another example of media dishonesty:
And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday...
A thing. The Inauguration!
... the speech, and everybody really liked the speech, you had to right? [applause] We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed. I get up this morning. I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I say: “wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out. The field was…. It looked like a million, a million and a half people.” They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there. And they said “Donald Trump did not draw well”. And I said “well it was almost raining”. The rain should have scared them away. But God looked down and he said “we’re not going to let it rain on your speech”.
Now, he's switching to the subject of the rain, about which there is no dispute with the media and no possible connection to the CIA.
In fact, when I first started I said “oh no”. First line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And i said “oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it”. But the truth is: that it stopped immediately. It was amazing. And then it became really sudden, and then I walked off and it poured right after I left - it poured.
At least he resisted additional speculation about God's expressing his opinion through precipitation.
But you know, we have something that’s amazing because, we had, it looked honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on, with my steak … and I get this network shows an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people.
With my steak?! Come on, Washington Post! He didn't suddenly inject the subject of what he was eating for dinner as he watched the news. He said: "And I turn on, and by mistake, I get this network and it shows an empty field."
Now that’s not bad. But it’s a lie. We had 250,000 people literally around, you know, the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20 block area all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed. So we caught them. And we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.
And a lot of people think that right here he's getting caught in a beauty and he's going to have to pay a big price. But it's like those thousands of Muslims dancing on the rooftops of Jersey City. He doesn't have to pay a big price. He got a big reward. He doesn't have to stick to facts. He can waft stories and call other people liars. He's probably right that the others are lying (or somewhere on the continuum between truth and lies). And he knows he can win by rousing us all from the dream of truth. It's all fake news, so pick the story you like. And he only needs half of the people to like his storytelling to get all of the power.
They had another one yesterday which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr Martin Luther King. And I also happen to like Churchill.
Churchill digression:
Winston Churchill. I think most of us like Churchill. He doesn’t come from our country. But he had lot to do with it. He helped us. A real ally. And as you know, the Churchill statue was taken out. The bust. And as you probably also have read, the Prime Minister is coming over to our country very shortly, and they wanted to know whether or not I’d like it back. And I said “absolutely, but in the meantime we have a bust of Churchill”.
So a reporter for Time magazine. And I have been on their cover like 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all time record in the history of Time magazine. Like it Tom Brady is on the cover of Time magazine, it’s one time, because he won the Superbowl or something, right? [laughter]. I’ve been on for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that they can ever be broken, do you agree with that? What do you think?
A digression in the middle of a digression. Trump's face on Time. And I've heard he got it wrong that this was a record, but I don't really care anymore. It's just an idea. His face is on Time a lot.
Getting back to MLK:
But I will say that, he said something that was very interesting: that “Donald Trump took down the bust, the statue, of Dr Martin Luther King”. It was right there. But there was a cameraman that was in front of it.
So Zeke - Zeke - from Time magazine writes a story about how I took it down. But I would never do that, because I have great respect for Dr Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is: a big story. And the retraction was like -- was it a line? Or did they even bother putting it in?
The MLK statue story. Man, that's a long story. But it's a memorable chapter in The Story of How Truth Died.
So I only like to say that because I love honesty. I like honest reporting.
Truth was dearly loved.
I will tell you the final time: although I will say it, when you let in your thousands of other people that had been trying to come in, because I am coming back. We may have to get you a larger room. [laughter, applause] We may have to get you a larger room. And maybe - maybe - it’ll be built by somebody that knows how to build and we won’t have columns [laughter] You understand that? We’d get rid of the columns.
He's talking about the CIA Headquarters and implying that he'd like to put on his construction hat and build them a better building — one where thousands can amass and columns do not obstruct their gaze upon the face that has launched a thousand TIME magazines.
I just wanted to really say that I love you.
That's disarming. You forget all the abuse.
I respect you. There’s nobody that I respect more. You’re going to do a fantastic job. And we’re going to start winning again. And you’re going to be leading the charge. So thank you all very much. Thank you, beautiful. Thank you all very much. Have a good day. I’ll be back. I’ll be back. Thank you.
Goodbye. Thank you. Have a nice day.
____________________________
* I got confused about the 2 Mikes. I'm sure the CIA people in the room did not.
The Clinton-era Labor Secretary, present-day Berkeley professor presents this as a recent conversation over breakfast. In the new fake-news, fact-challenged America, you're on your own to invent your own ideas about where this belongs on the continuum from verbatim to enhanced storytelling to wishful-thinking fiction:
Him: Trump is no Republican. He’s just a big fat ego. Me: Then why didn’t you speak out against him during the campaign? Him: You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot. Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do? Him (smirking): They’ll play along for a while. Me: A while? Him: They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything. Me: And then what? Him (laughing): They like Pence. Me: What do you mean? Him: Pence is their guy. They all think Trump is out of his mind. Me: So what? Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way… and you know he will ... Me: They impeach him? Him: You bet. They pull the trigger.
ADDED: What, in Trumpworld, would count as "big stupid clumsy"? And what, after all the liberal lawprofessorly manipulations of Obamaworld, would count as violating the law?
The Fallopian tube is giving the finger. And it's saying "Boy, Bye," which obviously means about the same thing as giving someone the finger — brusque rejection. If you know the Beyoncé song, "Sorry," it calls to mind the lyric:
Middle fingers up, put them hands high
Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye
Tell him, boy, bye, boy, bye, middle fingers up
I ain't thinking 'bout you
I'm reading the placard to mean: Get government out of my uterus. The "boy" is Trump and the sign is warning him away from any impingement on the female body. This is a good, straightforward message, and I agree with it.
I do see 2 problems:
1. One might read the "boy" as an unwanted child, waved "bye" through abortion. That's unfortunately mean and not helpful to the abortion rights cause. Abortion is better presented as the woman's choice about what do with her body, not any hatred toward the unborn.
2. The message Get government out of my uterus is a compelling libertarian message, but the Women's March may be seen as demanding more than the continued protection of reproductive freedom (which Trump does endanger, since he's said he wants a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade). Here's a list of the Women's March "unity principles," and it is not a "boy, bye" to the government. It's demanding that the government get very involved in women's bodies:
We do not accept any federal, state or local rollbacks, cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive healthcare services, birth control, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.
It's more of a "hi" than a "bye" — more of a hi,get in here and never go away. If that's your message, that Fallopian tube ought to be waving furiously.
I've searched many articles and can't find an answer. If you leave out the religious speakers — doing invocations and benedictions — and the Supreme Court Justices administering the oaths, you only get — other than Trump himself — Inaugural Committee chair, Roy Blunt, who gave the opening remarks, and Schumer. Why Schumer?
Schumer's remarks were widely perceived as antagonistic to Trump. Why was Schumer allowed to step on Trump's big day? I don't think he was entitled to speak. I don't think there's a tradition of letting the other party insert a dissenting voice. So why did that happen?
Was it Trump's idea — perhaps some deal-making guile involving flattery and extracting buy-in? I noticed Trump being cozily friendly with Schumer at the Congressional Luncheon and the signing ceremony. Is this a campaign to co-opt Schumer?
But was the Schumer speech antagonistic to Trump? Here's the full text. I'm reading it. He refers to our "challenging" times and our aptitude for dealing with challenges. He praised democracy (without any suggestion that Trump didn't fully win the election). And he mainly used his time to read a letter from a Civil War soldier that showed fortitude and patriotism. That letter, Chuck Schumer says, gives him "solace, strength," and he hopes it "will give you the same."
I guess what's anti-Trump is the suggestion that some people are needing solace and strength to get through the Trump administration and the hyperbole of likening our post-election divisions to the calamitous breakdown that was the Civil War. It's not that big a deal.
I'm just wondering why Schumer was speaking at all.
ADDED: I just happened to turn on CNN and hear:
Maggie Haberman (of the NYT): "Schumer's speech... was not exactly sort of a come-together we're-all-in-this-together. It was essentially a party doctrine."
Dan Balz: "It was a pre-buttal."
Haberman: "Exactly. And it was much more so than we have heard in a while. I understand what Schumer is doing. But if you are Trump, you hear that and then you say, you're only yelling at me about why we're not doing things together."
Fake news!
What Schumer actually said is being forgotten and replaced by a fake story that Schumer went completely partisan and divisive.
"Either the pothole got filled or it didn’t. It’s not like proving I wasn’t born in Kenya."
Said the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg, who's in the running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. Does it seem absurd that the major of a population-101,000 town could beat out Tom Perez and Keith Ellison? But he's an Afghanistan veteran, a Harvard graduate, and a Rhodes Scholar, and he's gay too, so you've got your diversity angle.
“Thanksgiving morning, by the way, I spent in a deer blind with my boyfriend’s father, so how’s that for a 2017 experience?,” he said. “But in the afternoon, we were sitting around the coffee table and his mom showed me this tube of cream, about the size of a tube of toothpaste. Only it’s not skin cream. Well, it is, but it’s topical chemotherapy her life depends on. It costs $2,000 a month. What is she supposed to do if they take away the ACA she used to pay for that?”
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