The New York Times is feeling feisty this morning, going out of their way to point out that the Trump administration’s alternative facts about the inauguration are false in every particular. They also hit the administration with a terrible review of their first days in office from Trump’s own top aides. For good measure, they trashed Sean Spicer, the new press secretary, slapped the president around for not releasing his tax returns, highlighted a new legal challenge that will claim that all foreign payments to Trump-owned companies are violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, and provided more coverage of the massive, global, anti-Trump women’s marches.
There will be no honeymoon for Trump with the Establishment media and that’s not a bad thing. Early kid’s gloves coverage of new administrations is usually as ritualistic as the inauguration ceremony, more done in politeness and respect for the office than for any genuine news purpose. It’s best to dispense with all the fluff pieces and get down to business, and never more so than with this bumbling insulting mess.
There’s no need to single out Sean Spicer to blame for this as Margaret Sullivan did in the Washington Post this morning. She said that Spicer’s Saturday evening press statement “should be seen for what it is: Remarks made over the casket at the funeral of access journalism.” But she then observed that Donald Trump “intends to make the American media his foremost enemy” and that he “wants a flat-out war with the nation’s media for one well-calculated reason: Because he believes it will continue to serve his political purposes, as it has for months.”
While Sullivan advised reporters to resist taking the bait and to strive for fairness, she concluded that with Barack “the only adult in the room” Obama out of office, the media “has to be the grown-up in the room,” since “we’ve just been reminded of who it won’t be.”
Especially without a high profile Democrat remaining to use as a piñata, Trump more than ever needs to use the media as a foil. But this strategy will not prevent people from noticing that he simply cannot do this job on even a pretend level. By making enemies out of both the media and the intelligence community, he’s made sure that people will notice his every failure.
What I am unclear about is whether the things described in this piece actually hurt Trump, or whether they serve to distract from the very real and dangerous changes that are being proposed and that will likely be enacted.
This stuff would have killed any other politician – with Trump it seems not to matter.
I have seen this movie before. When Reagan took office there were widespread predictions about how was not up to the job, and how he would fail spectacularly.
Reagan’s mistakes were legion.
And he won 49 states 4 years later.
Booman is worried, rightly, that Trump is not up to the job.
I am more worried about the opposite. That his base is so tuned out to the “MSM” that scandals that would have sunk other politicians have no effect on him.
That he takes office in some ways at a fortuitous time. The economy over the last 12 to 18 months has finally generated real wage growth, and if that is maintained over the next 18 months Trump will in all probability become more popular. That on the macro level his fiscal policy is likely to be more, and not less, expansionary.
That his focus on the symbolics of economics will be effective politically. Rick Scott was pretty good at this as well, and he was every bit as disliked as Trump. And Scott won re-election.
That harm from his policies will fall on those who have little voice in the political system. CNBC will loudly praise GDP growth of 3%, but talk little of cuts to those on Food Stamps.
In another thread someone said I am negative. It is true, I am. Very negative.
I don’t see much to be positive about, even after a historic political march.
This is certainly true. But his base is tiny.
It only looks “tiny” because you obviously reside so far away from it, marduk.
If you got out more you would begin to see…if your eyes weren’t so blindered that you are a personification of the “eyes wide closed” meme…the same sorts of things that I saw when I began trying to warn people about the seriousness of Trump’s threat, way back when he first announced his run for the RatPub nomination.
His “base” is potentially everyone in the country who is economically threatened by how things have been working for the past 30 years or so in the U.S. That includes…if he plays his hands right…the entire poverty class/working class/middle class population of this country.
I am not saying that I think his policies are actually going to help those people…the jury is still out on that question and I personally doubt it, myself. Where the jury in not out is in its verdict…backed by dollars and cents common sense…that what has been happening here for the last 30 years has put a working majority of the population in ongoing economic danger.
Trump’s got two years…barring the usual unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances…to add to his already close-to-a-majority vote. If he succeeds in that attempt then Congress will be even more red than it is now, as will the whole governor/state legislature system.
What then?
I dunno.
We shall find out, soon enough.
Trump’s bet…and I think it is a good one…is that enough Americans now have so many good reasons to distrust the media that every attack on him converts new followers. Kinda like the way radical Islam has grown.
Kill one and two or three or four pop up.
Like dat.
Watch.
AG
It only looks “tiny” because you obviously reside so far away from it, marduk.
No, it looks tiny because it is tiny. That’s what that sign means. Check it out again, you’ll figure it out eventually.
Trump got 62,979,636 votes.
This is “tiny?”
About 92,671,979 eligible voters did not vote. I would be willing to bet that of those voters, a goodly percentage of them were habitual non-voters who, if they had been somehow forced to vote would have voted for Trump.
Let’s say just for argument’s sake that maybe 46% of them…the same 46% that Trump won of those who did vote…voted for him.
That’s 135,301,089 voters.
“Tiny?”
Not.
AG
Gee Arthur, if you pretend almost half of non-voter support Trump it does seem like his support isn’t tiny. Good thing opinion polls don’t just make up numbers.
It’s also a good thing that poll numbers can no longer be trusted to make facts. If they did, HRC would have won in a landslide and the ongoing landslide…straight the fuck down…that has been occurring to the U.S would still be in full swing.
Instead, we have new deal of sorts.
Worse?
Better?
Just another hostile hustle?
We shall see.
Won’t we.
AG
P.S. One hint about what is going to happen?
Sure.
If the lying media remains united in its attacks on Trump, he is going to become more and more powerful. The media have lost their stranglehold on the American psyche, and to many Americans they are now a beacon pointing in the exact opposite direction of what they say.
Bet on it.
Watch.
I don’t entirely disagree on the big-ticket items Fladem has in mind, but the picture should be enlarged. I spent 27 years in government as a Foreign Service officer, and I noticed that most of governance isn’t “political” in a way that plays to Trump’s skills. What, after all, was really political about Katrina? What governance demands is a combination of good political skills and straightforward ability. Trump is radically defective in the latter, and the people he’s putting in place will not in many cases be of much help. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, for example, certainly won’t be. As well, Trump and his people are working really hard at enlarging the group of people who are personally invested in his failure and will be pleased to help bring that about. The result is likely to be some pretty spectacular crashes on competency-based concerns. That won’t help the victims of Republican malevolence on major “political” concerns such as the ACA, but it will emphasize the real danger to Americans as a whole from electing someone who has no idea how to do the job — a good point for 2020.
A better politician would have realized the political danger from Katrina far earlier than Bush did, and would have never behaved like he did in the days immediately thereafter.
It was the perception that Bush didn’t give a damn that did the real damage. That is not a mistake I think Trump would have ever made.
You are right, of course, to say that competence in governance should matter. We will see if you and Booman are right, and that the political consequences from some unforeseen disaster kill Trump’s presidency.
It wasn’t “the perception that Bush didn’t give a damn” that did the “real” damage, it was the catastrophic lack of preparation and the disastrous response after the fact. It was a nuts-and-bolts demonstration of pure incompetence right out in the open, just like 9/11 was (although he was given a mulligan on 9/11, more because everyone was so terrified than for any rational reason).
With Trump we’ll see the same thing — even more of the same thing, and to a much stronger degree, and immediately (in fact, we’re already seeing it). Trump makes G. W. Bush look like Lincoln, in comparison, because at least Bush had some idea of how government functions; how things get done, about how one lobbies for bills and builds constituencies and form “teams of enemies” and all of it.
Trump thinks that, because he campaigned on (say) bringing manufacturing back, he can just sit in the Oval Office and say, “Bring manufacturing back” (like a King) or “lower taxes on the rich” and it will just happen. He literally has no idea how government works. And the people around him are either zealots found under rocks or conniving Svengali/Rasputin figures who are trying to bend his will to their own ends (and none of them agree).
Look, I could be wrong — Trump could somehow rally himself and begin coalition-building; knuckle down like in the movie Dave and bust out some yellow legal pads and contrive some surprisingly effective approaches and solutions. But I just can’t see it. I mean, he’s never done anything like that in his entire life.
I don’t see Trump as a better politician when it comes to handling these things. I see him and the people he surrounds him as extremely anti-liberal partisans. I would not be surprised to see the government response to these things as being Red State/Blue State based. That’s not going to play well.
Thank you for your post. You obvious experience gives you a credence and thoughtfulness that I don’t encounter much. I hope you will post more.
I second the request to hear more from your experienced perspective. Mr. Trump is going to upset all apple carts in sight, and this includes the EU apple cart, where he is going to alter NATO agreements, by insisting on EU states paying full freight. If Putin gets cutesy, and deploys Russian forces near the Baltic states, or near Georgia, or near another state, what then?
I too am worried about an expansionary macro fiscal policy. That could let him stumble and bumble into another four years despite his incompetence in other matters. He has the congress, something that Obama did not. But we could lose many social programs or see them diminished.
Holding Congress means no investigations into things like Benghazi. Or e-mail servers.
Obama had the Congress more at this point in his presidency than Trump did.
Yes, I know and without it we would not have gotten the stimulus,or,the ACA. I was thinking of the last six years.
Cuts to social programs such as ACA, SS and Medicare, as well as every non-military agency will be severely contractionary.
Tax cuts for the rich are famously non-expansionary.
Phony infrastructure spending produces nothing. Increased military spending and tax cuts for rich did precious little for economy under Bushco.
Proposed Trumpian trade wars will take time for economy to benefit from, and likely increase prices, since the chief benefit of all the absurd “free trade” deals was to lower cost of goods for big box retailers.
Massive Trump/Repub deficits likely drive up interest rates, which tends to be contractionary macro policy.
Massive global uncertainty over having Madman in WH likely further chills global and US business investment.
Return to “Anything Goes!” Repub pollution regime is likely expansionary in short term, as unregulated pollution mostly sows seeds of (future) fatalities and debilitating illnesses in (lower income) people in target regions. Massive die offs of American wildlife meaningless to Americans, but might have some adverse effect on leisure, tourism. Most Americans hate the natural world at this point in our history, so Pollute-at-Will regime is likely of no consequence to their “economic” thinking. Increased extreme weather events very costly to national economy, and obviously somewhat contractionary, but Repub plan is to fund disaster relief only in afflicted Red States.
On the whole, the tenets of Trumpism (to the extent they can be surmised and predicted) more likely contractionary, as Krugman maintains.
Chris Armade a writer for the Guardian set out to do what many should be doing, he actually went out and talked to people who voted for Trump.
In part he summarized what he learned:
One of the reasons I am so pessimistic is we seemed determined to repeat arguments that do not win.
And generally more people are falling down the ladder than going up in an uneven distribution. Constant feed of the disaffected, no?
I agree with you. I think Trump is in a good position to grow his popularity with the people who just want to see things happening.
The election is over. The next Congressional election isn’t for another two years. What does it matter that “people notice his every failure”? Do you recognize the damage that this asshole can inflict on the country, on the world, in two years? WTF ?!
Yes. And what we’re saying is that unlike Bush, the damage is going to be reported rather than covered up. Or at least covered more fairly. There’s not much we can do at this point short of trying to organize our own armed rebellion, we need to make sure the damage is covered. We need to keep him unpopular with our own side
Pack Journalism.
Press tends to stampede in the same direction.
Looking over WashPo and NYT this AM, Trump’s staff Lies and Trump’s staff screw up are lots of “trending” stories. No honeymoon for this bozo.
I see Trump is busy this morning exploding the economy. Pulling out of NAFTA has the consequence that he can then impose his 35% import tax. Of course two big trade partners Canada & Mexico that have joining us in enjoying no tariffs between us point to how many pieces and parts of our ‘American made’ products come from Mexico…car parts come to mind.
Each segment and story I watch points to jobs lost, loss of new home ownership, costs going up.
Only question left is how many Obamas can we find to put the pieces of this country back together again when Trump exits?
He just withdrew from TPP and put a freeze on federal hiring except military. NAFTA could be trickier.
The federal hiring freeze will hurt the economy and the job market as well.
Withdrawing from TPP does nothing since we haven’t actually signed the TPP. I think the others, including Mexico, should just continue on, include China if they want, and that is that. My guess is that the significant parties don’t want to include China without having the US as a balance, but what’s done is done.
Frankly, if I’m Mexico, I’d just delay whatever “renegotiation” this administration wants. Since the purpose of the negotiation is to “punish Mexico” there’s no reason to negotiate. Most of the taxes are going to be levied on the products of US companies and consumers. There’s no reason to “hurt” its own consumers with higher prices. Instead Mexico should see what it can do to invest in its own petroleum refining capacity. There’s no reason to send its petroleum to Texas for refining and reimport if Trump is going to tax those imports. Build excess capacity and become the refining hub for Latin America and the Carribean. They have the trade agreements in place with most of the major petroleum exporters anyway. So let the US tax away its own “refine for export” business. Exports of unrefined petroleum have exploded to Mexico since 2010. Mexico should try to do what it can to dry that up.
Maybe China will build them what they need.
Seriously, I’d really like the MEXICO SUCK ON THIS crowd to explain to me exactly what Mexico has done to rig the system. They appear to be following the rules. There isn’t an industry that they have blocked from growing in their country.
You write:
True.
Truthy, in a truthiness kind of way.
An alternative truth, one that better explains the lock-step anti-Trump march of almost the entire corporate-owned government media complex, is that his presidency threatens the neolib/neocon hustle that has run this country since…well, since whichever coup you might want to point out…certainly since the Lewinsky affair which was some sort of honeytrap intelligence operation meant to assure Bush II’s election. It almost failed because Bush II was so transparently an idiot that votes had to be jiggered. You may recall that the same government media complex that has so united in an anti-Trump barrage remained in the case of Bush II well within its usual DemRat/RatPub 50/50 split,despite Bush II being even less qualified for office than is the Trumpster. At least Trump can think on his feet and fight.
Bush?
I got yer “clown,” right here!!!
Anyway…that’s all water under the bridge. Trump is going to fight the PermaGov to the death, I think. He is not in the business of compromise or the already compromised media would be playing its usual one foot on either side of the line game.
Watch.
It’s gonna get rough.
Quickly.
There are uncountable trillions of dollars at stake.
All wars are fought over power, and money is power.
Watch.
AG
Looks like the debate in this thread is whether the antics and Big Lies of Der Trumper will become “known” to the ordinary rube via extensive reports in the MSM or whether the MSM is now obsolete, as Trump’s now all supporters get their “news” from some US edition of the Volkischer Beobachter.
It sure looks like Comey’s “news” about “moar emails!” a week before the election became “known” to the incompetent white electorate. They had to learn about it somewhere and they don’t all watch Foxischer Beobachter exclusively. So it would seem quite possible that Der Trumper’s upcoming parade of Big Lies can very well become “known” to the ordinary schmoe, especially if previously off-limit terms like “lies” and “falsehoods” continue to be used by corporate media.
Gruppenfuhrer Bannon kicked off TrumpAmerica with the gambit of attempting to overawe and cow the useless corporate media from Day One. The trotting out of Strurmbannfuhrer Spicer with the spectacular claim that more people attended the crowning of Der Trumper than the Pussy Hat march (or any other inauguration in history!) was worthy of the illustrious Baghdad Bob. It looks to have failed pretty soundly, but it’s likely the Gruppenfuhrer will continue the tactic for at least the near future to gauge the actual appetite of the media (and its owners) for a protracted battle to the death.
Much too early to predict the outcome, but this is certainly an attempt to create a Putin-style national media environment slobbering over the Leader; that’s the most likely motivation given Team Trump’s obvious admiration for the leader of their Alliance.