Donald Trump has only the dimmest idea of how our government is supposed to work, and he cares very little about learning. He probably thought he was being magnanimous and fair when he sent Kellyanne Conway out to announce that he will not be looking to “lock up” Hillary Clinton for either her use of a private email server or the work of the Clinton Foundation. But, as the Washington Post explains, the opposite of politicizing the Justice Department is not telling them what not to investigate and prosecute.
Trump’s apparent decison, conveyed by Kellyanne Conway in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” is a change from his campaign rhetoric, in which he issued incendiary calls for a special prosecutor to reopen the FBI’s closed investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server while secretary of state and had also urged investigations of allegations of corruption at the Clinton Foundation. He nicknamed the Democratic nominee “Crooked Hillary” and encouraged chants of “Lock her up!” at his rallies.
Trump’s decision to pursue or not pursue a criminal investigation from the Oval Office would be an extraordinary break with political and legal protocol, which holds that the attorney general and FBI make decisions on whether to conduct investigations and file charges, free of pressure from the president.
Or, if you prefer a legal scholar to explain this to you:
“The president-elect has demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of how the government makes these kinds of decisions,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “The attorney general answers to the president, but the department is supposed to be independent, especially when it comes to prosecutorial decisions. Any president, especially our next president, needs to both understand and respect that – or else they risk politicizing criminal prosecutions in ways that can be damaging.”
So, the ironic result here is that Trump gets blasted for violating legal protocol by breaking his ludicrous campaign promise to use the Department of Justice to pursue his political opponent to the ends of the Earth.
He really isn’t any good at this Presidenting thing, and it’s unlikely to get any better.
This will get a whole hell of a lot worse before it gets better, and that’s my optimistic take on things.
Hopefully he won’t be so good at the dictator thing either. Like his meeting with the press yesterday. It was all out of order. FIRST you unleash the storm troopers, THEN you threaten the press. Everyone knows that. What a doofus!
Trump has a plan for government workers. They’re not going to like it.
In this instance Trump is just being true to form. He is doing publicly what almost every president has formerly done privately…using the Federal government in general and the Justice Dept. in particular as part of his weaponry. That’s why they get to pick their own executives at Justice, FBI, IRS and the rest.. The word trickles down through the ranks, and if it doesn’t, heads roll.
Trump is all about tearing the genteel cover off of the Permanent Government. He did it by informing the public that he essentially bought the Clintons’ “goodwill” by donating to their foundation, etc., and now he’s doing it with his appointments. He is basically saying “Fuck you!!!” to the whole way business has been conducted in DC for decades. This attitude won him the presidency and he is going to take it right to the wall.
Unfortunately…from my own point of view…he is hiring and controlling the wrong people in the wrong directions. But what do I know? I didn’t win the election, he did.
So it goes.
For as long as he remains president.
Get used to it.
ASG
Trump doesn’t understand our government or how things work in the structure. He sees himself as a king rather than a head of a democracy.
The media and the press allowed him, even encouraged him to believe that, and now, not even the president yet, the giddiness of power has given him more bravado than ever before.
His advisors and Cabinet are neo-Nazis and his bloated campaign promises are being punctured before Day One of his presidency. So far, Trump has stumbled and bungled his path to leadership, so when the Inauguration finally comes, he’ll be enmeshed in a swamp of his own making.
I hope it swallows him up.
I’m into history and Trumps behavior is a lot like a king. A rather normal state of affairs…. for 350 years ago. Yeesh.
This is rapidly assuming the shape of a compete fiasco — not the terrifying revenge-fueled destructive catastrophe we all feared, but a much more mundane fiasco; a kind of immediate total collapse that will make Jimmy Carter look like Lincoln.
He’s the only President I can think of who’s managed to commit not just one but several impeachable offenses, right out in the open, before even taking office. And he’s not even aware of it. As Josh Marshall has noted yesterday and today, he doesn’t seem to understand “conflict of interest” on a conceptual level, or have even the slightest understanding of what journalists do (Marshall describes how he clearly thinks that their misread of the stats election night invalidates their coverage of the entire campaign, meaning that he feels they have to “apologize” to him).
You write:
“…a kind of immediate total collapse that will make Jimmy Carter look like Lincoln.”
Sorry, Jordan. People have been parroting the skewed mass media coverage of Trump as “inept” on any level they can find to diss him for going on two years now, and he has continued to do nothing but win. Why? Because his apparent “ineptitude” is a form of primitive genius, that’s why.
He runs somehing up the flagpole. If it doesn’t work, he takes it down and runs some other tactic up the same flagpole. Mass media says he is “contradicting” himself or lying or completely stupid. He is none of those things. He’s been perfecting this game for 40 years. It works. Get used to it and get real. Impotent complaints from the left don’t mean shit to him. Only power means something, and he now has as much power (or more) than has had any one U.S. citizen in 50 years or more.
He’s going to pack the Federal government with his stooges and then he’s going to rain holy hell on anybody who opposes him, including the PermaGov media. He doesn’t give a shit.
What do you think that scolding session/”meeting” with the major media representatives was all about yesterday? it was him laying down the new rules. And you know what? They’re going to buckle, those media hucksters. They’ll try to save face publicly but there’s a new sheriff in town, they know it and they’re in the business of profit.
Watch.
Next chapter?
Somewhere around a few weeks before his inauguration? When maximum face will have been saved?
The Normalization Of Trump.
The New Normal.
Watch.
AG
I’m really not interested in your incoherent, snide, adolescent-level commentary, Arthur. Never have been, never will be — as you’d know if you bothered to even distinguish between the other regulars here, which you’ve freely admitted you don’t ever do; we’re all a gray fog taht can’t penetrate your maddening solipsism. Your overriding “theme” — a kind of amped-up, drama-queen fatalism — would get old just as fast even if it wasn’t so repetitive and simplistic.
That’s ok, Jordan…you see, I am interested in the incoherent…as in not getting done what you want to get done…commentaries of many of the people here. The go0d-hearted, intelligent leftinesses, the center-left contingent. Always have been, always will be. That’s where i originally came from. They’re my people. Hereditarily. That’s why I do keep trying. A few of them…nalbar and marduk leading the pack from the back…I have totally given up on. You? I answered you, didn’t I?
The words “simplistic” and “simple” do not mean the same thing. I have one “simple” answer to the problems besetting the left, but it is far from simplistic…..become aware of the betrayal of your leaders. Then do something about it.
You should never again trust anyone who was intimately volved in the HRC campaign, for example. Not the “public/private” dichotomy-besotted Clintons, not the Schultzes and Braziles, not the mass media fixers on every level. Why? Because they failed to come through on their “public” pronouncements, that’s why. They will be thrown under the bus by the real movers and shakers as those controllers move rightward in order to attempt to control and co-opt the Trump movement. This has already started.
Always remember…the best definition of insanity is continuing to act in as manner that has proven not to work. The mainstream Dem culture has not really “worked” very well…from a true a progressive point of view, anyway…since at least the JFK coup, JBJ notwithstanding. Maybe even further back, to FDR. It has become a two-faced, vote harvesting/corporation stooge. “Public face/private face.” HRC’s worst mistake was allowing that statement to escape from the rooms of power in which it was made.
So it goes.
Not interested in what I have to say?
Also simply solved.
Don’t read it.
No skin off my teeth.
Later…
AG
“He runs somehing up the flagpole. If it doesn’t work, he takes it down and runs some other tactic up the same flagpole.”
To me this sounds exactly right. I think what he found was a series of #1 hot buttons – Economy/Trade, Immigration, Terrorism, Crime, and the “Establishment elites”. Everyone has a #1 issue and Trump found enough of them that he could then tie together in a who and what matrix to build broader support than anyone thought possible.
Immigrants cause crime, immigrants are terrorists, the elites outsourced your jobs, the elites are soft on terrorism, immigrants steal your jobs…
Along with “I’ll be the toughest on crime, terrorism, trade…my opponents are weak and crooked.”
I have read a number of analysis of how Trump won but they all seem to be caught up in demographics and never quite convince me. I think he put together a multi-threaded message under a larger theme of authoritarianism that spoke to many people’s #1 concerns regardless of demographic.
In his own way this is what Bernie did tying everything back to the oligarchs and inequality. Both did much better than the establishment elite thought they would.
Yiu write:
“Both did much better than the establishment elite thought they would.”
Indeed they did.
One lost; the other won. Now they are going to try to “moderate” him.
We’ll see how that goes, soon enough.
I personally think that Trump will continue to outflank them, at least until they get really serious.
Then he’ll value his own skin over winning any further.
Watch.
AG
How would you like to be Hillary and hear this? It sounds like ” don’t you dare criticize me, or I will come after you.” We have become watchamacallit, a banana republic. Put your opposition in jail, it’s safer that way.
Trump’s Inaugural Address:
At the end of the day, Trump doesn’t give a damn about government, perma or otherwise. He could give a rat’s behind about traditions or protocols; he’ll leave that to the Priebus/Ryan crowd to do as they wish. As long as Trump is signing off on whatever craziness the GOP has been salivating over for years, they will look askance at his using the Presidency to enrich himself and his family, his primary interest. The noxious odor to emanate from the Trumpian swamp will be unprecedented. As for not being rational, ignorant etc., and he is all of that and more, there is a method to his madness, that has worked well for him. Calling out Trump’s irrationality is like calling out a thief’s dishonesty.
You write:
“Calling out Trump’s irrationality is like calling out a thief’s dishonesty.”
Yup.
Precisely.
Thank you.
ASG
I agree with both of you. Another observation is that what Trump has done has normalized what’s always been there but kept a kinda-sorta secret (if you will). Trump has normalized the White Supremacist/white trailor trash base in order to publically marry them to the upper crust base. Both bases voted for Trump. The white supremacists were out loud about it. The upper crust base lied about it. I have family members who still won’t admit they voted for Trump, but they did and are happy he won.
Trump is normalizing racism/white supremacy for the country club set (who have always been nothing but racists, sexists & white supremacists anyway), and making it ok for the super rich to be “ok” with being seen to be the racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic sexists that they’ve always been.
This is rapidly becoming the new normal, and already Steve Bannon has issued the George Orwell edict that we are NOT to call them racists, anti-Semites, etc, because: They’re NOT because Steve Bannon said so.
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better & Far More Superior!
I don’t think we can allow that without a fight. Otherwise, we may lose the white vote in rural areas forever, IMO we need to ensure inclusivity of all people and that can’t happen if we keep on with identity politics centered in urban areas. The people in rural areas have their own concerns. They like guns, hunting, go to meeting times, tractors, farms, shitty jobs and such. And they would like a little help in their communities. Best we make some peace with that and not exclude them.
Bernie said the same thing about identity politics, and he’s right. Some don’t like it, because they think it means abandoning support for core constituencies — blacks, LGBTQ, women, etc. Dems can still support all of these, BLM, abortion, etc. Just don’t lead with it.
I’d like to see the democratic party go back to its roots to being a “people’s party,” one that put the focus on working folk, wherever they are. When we do we cross identity lines anyway because regardless of race/ethnicity/nationality we all have common interests — the ability to work and make enough to support their families, send their kids to college, to be treated fairly in dealings with corporations and government, access to healthcare and have a decent retirement. When dems say “the African American vote,” that identification misses the fact that they want the same things other working folk do. And these are the same things rural folk want. They want decent jobs, they want to see small business come back to their communities, they want to be able to raise and educate their kids, and not have a healthcare emergency bankrupt them.
The silver lining I see in this Trump victory is the democratic party is going to have to reorient itself. We need to cultivate and raise up leaders who are oriented toward support for working folk and their families. The Clinton “fighting for you” message doesn’t work because the leaders are all feeding at the Wall Street trough. They insist they can have it both ways, but when people ask the question, what has the party done for me, the honest answer says otherwise.
Divining rural voters seems intractable, but that’s only because the party is so steeped in identity and over intellectualizing issues that it talks past its natural constituencies and kids itself into thinking not only that they speak for them, but they know best, e.g. they fall victim to their own bullshit.
Jesus H Christ, how hard is it to just go out to these rural communities, spend some time there, speak to these people and help them raise up community leaders and include them in policy making quorums? And focus on common issues that cut across identify and then craft simple messages to speak to and rally them come election time.
my mind
“Dems can still support all of these, BLM, abortion, etc. Just don’t lead with it.”
Exactly.
” … how hard is it to just go out to these rural communities, spend some time there, speak to these people and help them raise up community leaders and include them in policy making quorums?”
I’d start with the Dems that are already there. They may be in the minority, but they know the territory, they know the people, they know how to talk to folks. They even know the history, how things got this way from the local perspective.
. . . in urban areas.”
The “identity politics centered in urban areas” are those of white racists, many, though not all, rural!
That is the most salient lesson of the election, and the most valid application of the term “identity politics”. The “identity” is “white” (aka “European”).
This notion that white racists are not the ones actually practicing “identity politics” is one of the most noxious and ridiculous I’ve ever encountered.
Indeed. I want to add Trump is a hateful man. He shows it almost everyday. And he uses it to intimidate all he can. Hell, he may end up the wealthiest man on the planet after the next four years.
And he’s not officially President-elect until December 19.
Which means that anything said between election day and then doesn’t count.
Nor does anything he says after December 19.
It is all just one, long con. All of it. And his ‘supporters’ are the chumps. All we are expected to do now is pay up.