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The President vs. Federal Law Enforcement Print
Tuesday, 25 July 2017 08:40

Wittes writes: "President Trump yesterday issued a stunning vote of no-confidence in basically everyone currently in a leadership position in the Justice Department, the FBI, or the special counsel's office - in other words, not just some federal law enforcement, but all of it."

Donald Trump. (photo: Al Drago/NYT)
Donald Trump. (photo: Al Drago/NYT)

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The President vs. Federal Law Enforcement

By Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare

25 July 17


This story originally ran July 20, 2017, the day after Trump's comments in the New York Times interview became public.


resident Trump yesterday issued a stunning vote of no-confidence in basically everyone currently in a leadership position in the Justice Department, the FBI, or the special counsel’s office—in other words, not just some federal law enforcement, but all of it. The President’s rebuke comes in a lengthy interview with the New York Times yesterday, and it reaches everyone from the attorney general to staff attorneys hired by Robert Mueller—whose investigation he pointedly did not promise not to terminate. His complaint? They’re all, in different ways, not serving him. And serving him, he makes clear, is their real job.

It’s a chilling interview—chilling because of the portrait it paints of presidential paranoia, chilling for its monomaniacal view of the relationship between the president and law enforcement, and chilling for what it says about Trump’s potential readiness to interfere with the Mueller investigation.

If Attorney General Jeff Sessions does not resign this morning, it will reflect nothing more or less than a lack of self respect on his part—a willingness to hold office even with the overt disdain of the President of the United States, at whose pleasure he serves, nakedly on the record.

The president is evidently distraught at Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation “right after he gets the job.” (Sessions recused himself on March 2—three weeks after his swearing-in and fifteen weeks after his nomination.) The Attorney General gave the president “zero” heads up, Trump says. In Trump’s view: “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” He twice describes Sessions’s decision as “unfair to the president,” seemingly unaware that his recusal was almost surely compelled by Justice Department recusal rules. That is, the President is openly expressing bitterness toward his attorney general for following the rules—because the rules don’t favor Trump’s interests. He wants an attorney general who will actively supervise the Justice Department, and the Russia investigation, in a fashion congenial to his interests, and he has no compunction about saying so explicitly. He made perfectly clear that he regrets appointing Sessions. He made equally clear that Sessions’s job is, in his mind, a personal service contract to him and that if Sessions couldn’t deliver on service to Trump, he shouldn’t have taken the position.

To add insult to injury, Trump also heaped scorn on the then-nominee’s inability to give satisfactory answers about his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearing—on which he blames the recusal. “Sessions gave some bad answers,” he said. The president went on: “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t. He then becomes attorney general, and he then announces he’s going to recuse himself. Why wouldn’t he have told me that before?”

Sessions has hardly shrouded himself in glory over the past few months, but it is wildly improper for the President to talk about the attorney general in this fashion. The attorney general serves at his pleasure. If he is dissatisfied with Sessions’s performance, Trump can remove him. Unlike the FBI director, Sessions does not have a ten-year term that creates some normative expectation of retention. It would be, of course, inappropriate to fire the attorney general for having the temerity to follow Justice Department recusal policies on the advice of career lawyers, but it’s also inappropriate to whine publicly about his conduct without removing him. For those who need a reminder, the proper thing for a President to say publicly about a recusal in a live investigative matter—one that involves him directly and personally—is nothing whatsoever.

But Trump was just getting started in his attacks on federal law enforcement with his comments about Sessions. Moving down the Justice Department chain of command, the President is also cool toward Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, describing Sessions’ recusal as causing the president to “end up with a second man.” He distances Rosenstein from both himself and Sessions: he declares that “Jeff hardly knew” Rosenstein and characterizes Rosenstein as “from Baltimore” before noting, “There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any.” (Rosenstein did work in Baltimore in his capacity as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, but he grew up in Pennsylvania.)

Trump’s beef with Rosenstein is, of course, the deputy attorney general’s appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. He points to “conflicts” in Rosenstein’s role: that Rosenstein both recommended Comey’s firing and now is “involved in the case.” This frustration seems to be long-running: Trump made a similar point on Twitter last month, writing, “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!” While Trump has previously admitted that Rosenstein’s memo criticizing Comey was pretextual and that the president would have dismissed the FBI director regardless, yesterday he hedged, saying, “Now, perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter, O.K.”

Then there’s Mueller himself. The president declares bluntly, “I have done nothing wrong. A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case.” And he regards Mueller as conflicted because he was briefly considered to replace Comey.

Trump describes his meeting with Mueller while interviewing him for the job of FBI Director as “wonderful” and says that “of course … he wanted the job.” And he seems to regard this as some kind of conflict of interest on Mueller’s part. Trump does not seem to understand or even be able to imagine that Mueller might have been talking to him out of a sense of public service, not personal interest, with respect to an agency he had led for a long time and treasures and which Trump had plunged into crisis.

“Talk about conflicts? But he was interviewing for the job.” Trump also hints at knowledge of additional, as-yet-unreported conflicts on Mueller’s part, stating, “There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.” Following his appointment as special counsel, ethics officials at the Justice Department declared Mueller free of conflicts on the matter of his prior work with WilmerHale, which also employs counsel for Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Paul Manafort.

Nor did the President stop at Mueller personally. He also went after his staff. In response to a question about whether he would consider dismissing Mueller, he declared, “Look, there are so many conflicts that everybody has.” Previously, the president has alleged that other members of the Mueller’s staff have conflicts of interest, stating last month on Fox & Friends that “the people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters, some of them worked for Hillary Clinton.” At least three members of the special counsel’s team have given money to Democrats and two gave the legal maximum to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, though Mueller himself was a registered Republican at the time of his FBI Directorship and has been widely described as apolitical.

And to top it off, the President apparently feels no compunction either about commenting on the proper scope of Mueller’s investigation substantively. When asked whether a potential investigation of the Trump family finances “unrelated to Russia” would constitute a “red line” in the investigation, Trump stated, “I think that’s a violation.” And he didn’t say no when asked whether such conduct would lead him to fire Mueller; rather, he hedged, stating that “I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Trump still wasn’t done. It’s not just the special counsel investigating him, his staff, the attorney general, and the deputy attorney general with whom the President of the United States has a beef. It’s also the FBI leadership—or that part of it, anyway, that he hasn’t already fired.

Trump was sharply critical of Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe on the grounds that McCabe’s wife received money from political organizations connected to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, in support of her 2015 campaign for Virginia state Senate. The president uses this connection to suggest some partisan bias on McCabe’s part: “We have a director of the F.B.I., acting, who received $700,000, whose wife received $700,000 from, essentially, Hillary Clinton. ’Cause it was through Terry [McAuliffe]. Which is Hillary Clinton.”

The president’s point is somewhat unclear here, as he then jumps to a condemnation of Hillary Clinton’s conduct related to the FBI investigation into her private email server. But this is not the first time that he has used this line of attack against McCabe. In James Comey’s written statement provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee before his testimony, Comey describes a phone conversation in which the president informed Comey that “he hadn’t brought up ‘the McCabe thing’ because I had said McCabe [then Comey’s deputy] was honorable, although McAuliffe was close to the Clintons and had given him (I think he meant Deputy Director McCabe’s wife) campaign money.” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) voiced a similar criticism of McCabe during the confirmation hearing for Christopher Wray as FBI Director.

If, on reading this, it sounds like the President believes that law enforcement should be at his personal beck and call, that’s because that is, in fact, exactly what he believes. We know this because he made this belief perfectly clear in the interview as well. At one point, he offered an extraordinary account of the history of the FBI and its relationship to the Justice Department. He indicated that around the time of the Nixon administration, “out of courtesy, the F.B.I. started reporting to the Department of Justice.” He continued: “But there was nothing official, there was nothing from Congress. There was nothing — anything. But the FBI person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting. You know, which is interesting.”

Indeed.

Trump’s logic isn’t easy to follow here, but his core claim is unmistakeable—and “interesting” is a generous word for it: the FBI director serves the president. As a matter of constitutional hierarchy, this is of course true. But in investigative matters, the FBI director does not, or should not, serve the president by reporting to him. He serves the president by leading law enforcement in an independent and apolitical fashion. And it is fundamentally corrupt for any president to be asking him to do otherwise.

As for the convoluted rationale he uses to get to this corruption, well, suffice it to say that Trump’s suggestion that the FBI voluntarily began reporting to the Justice Department around the Nixon era betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the wave of critical Bureau reforms during that time. These were implemented shortly after Watergate and other scandals brought to light the FBI’s abusive and unlawful activities during the 48-year reign of Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Those reforms were, of course, designed to preclude exactly the kind of power relationship to which Trump now lays claim. In a foundational 1978 speech that has shaped subsequent Department policy, Jimmy Carter's attorney general, Griffin Bell, affirmed the independence of the Justice Department and its constituent entities, including the FBI. Bell declared, “it is improper for any Member of Congress, any member of the White House staff, or anyone else, to attempt to influence anyone in the Justice Department with respect to a particular litigation decision, except by legal argument or the provision of relevant facts.”

The astonishing implication of Trump’s view is that he believes the president may shut down an FBI investigation that displeases him. Indeed, Trump went so far as to say that too: when explaining why it would not be a problem even if he had told Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, he stated, “other people go a step further. I could have ended that whole thing just by saying—they say it can’t be obstruction because you can say: ‘It’s ended. It’s over. Period.’”

In an environment in which the President of the United States, in a single interview, expresses no-confidence in the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, the special counsel, the acting FBI director, and the special counsel’s staff, and in which he makes clear that the FBI should be his personal force and that all of law enforcement should be about serving him, the principle protection is having people with backbone who are willing to do their jobs and stand up for one another in the elevation of their oaths of office over political survival.

Unfortunately, the signs are not particularly encouraging on this front. Even as the President was attacking him to the Times, Rosenstein was busy giving an interview to Fox News that won’t reassure anyone on Mueller’s staff that the acting attorney general is the man with whom to share a foxhole. After confirming that he stands by his recommendation to fire Comey and clucking about the confidentiality of memos, Rosenstein gave a lukewarm response to questions about Mueller’s staff. While Rosenstein defended his decision to appoint Mueller, he did not splash cold water on the notion that his staff may be compromised by political contributions. In response to MacCallum’s insinuation that “some of the attorneys he has hired ... have made donations to the Clinton campaign” and a question about whether this “bother[s]” him, Rosenstein passed up the chance to express confidence in a staff that ultimately reports to him. Instead, gave this ominously puzzling answer: “The Department of Justice, we judge by results. And so my view about that is, we'll see if they do the right thing.”

We are in a dangerous moment—one in which the President, with his infinite sense of grievance, feels entitled publicly to attack the entire federal law enforcement apparatus, and that apparatus, in turn, lacks a single person with the stature, the institutional position, and the fortitude to stand up to him. Sessions has not done so. While Rosenstein did the country an enormous service when he appointed Mueller, he acted as an enabler of the Comey firing in the first instance and did not do himself credit yesterday. Mueller certainly has the stature, but by the nature of his position he cannot say anything publicly; he is investigating the President and thus cannot also confront him. And McCabe, who has been both able and courageous in the aftermath of Comey’s firing, is in an acting capacity.

The man who had the stature, the institutional position, and the moral fiber to confront the President on such matters was Comey, who is no longer there and whom the President also slimed in his interview yesterday.

The result is an environment in which the President can say these things without obvious consequence, at least for now. Rosenstein or Sessions could change that today. If they were willing to be touched by greatness even for a moment, they would resign together with a strong statement in defense of the integrity of federal law enforcement, the men and women who carry it out, and the processes under which they work. That’s what people with honor would do in this situation.

Don’t hold your breath.


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I Warned You Trump Would Win Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=35918"><span class="small">Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page</span></a>   
Monday, 24 July 2017 13:55

Moore writes: "One year ago today I wrote this open letter trying to warn my fellow Americans that Trump was going to win the election that was less than four months away."

Filmmaker Michael Moore. (photo: Sara Krulwich/NYT)
Filmmaker Michael Moore. (photo: Sara Krulwich/NYT)

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I Warned You Trump Would Win

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page

24 July 17

 

ne year ago today I wrote this open letter trying to warn my fellow Americans that Trump was going to win the election that was less than four months away -- and that he would do it by winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Needless to say, I didn't do a very good job convincing those who were sure Hillary would win and that we had nothing to worry about with Trump the Idiot on the ballot.

Friends:

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this!

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!”

Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great hope for the country I live in. Things are better. The left has won the cultural wars. Gays and lesbians can get married. A majority of Americans now take the liberal position on just about every polling question posed to them: Equal pay for women – check. Abortion should be legal – check. Stronger environmental laws – check. More gun control – check. Legalize marijuana – check. A huge shift has taken place – just ask the socialist who won 22 states this year. And there is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide.

But that is not how it works in America. People have to leave the house and get in line to vote. And if they live in poor, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, they not only have a longer line to wait in, everything is being done to literally stop them from casting a ballot. So in most elections it’s hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the problem for November – who is going to have the most motivated, most inspired voters show up to vote? You know the answer to this question. Who’s the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot?  That’s right. That’s the high level of danger we’re in. And don’t fool yourself — no amount of compelling Hillary TV ads, or outfacting him in the debates or Libertarians siphoning votes away from Trump is going to stop his mojo.

Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win:

  1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.  I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

    From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

    And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

  2. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity!

    That’s a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!

  3. The Hillary Problem. Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.

    Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

  4. The Depressed Sanders Vote. Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS. Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her  — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.

  5. The Jesse Ventura Effect. Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like. Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

Coming back to the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up.” That was it. That was enough for him. To “shake things up.” President Trump would indeed do just that, and a good chunk of the electorate would like to sit in the bleachers and watch that reality show.

(Next week I will post my thoughts on Trump’s Achilles Heel and how I think he can be beat.)


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Donald Trump Doesn't Want to Fire Jeff Sessions. He Wants Sessions to Quit. Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44624"><span class="small">Chris Cillizza, CNN</span></a>   
Monday, 24 July 2017 13:54

Cillizza writes: "Trump wants Sessions gone. But he doesn't want to swing the proverbial sword. He wants to make Sessions' life so uncomfortable that Sessions throws up his hands and walks away."

Jeff Sessions. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Jeff Sessions. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

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ALSO SEE: Trump Humiliates Jeff Sessions on Twitter

Donald Trump Doesn't Want to Fire Jeff Sessions. He Wants Sessions to Quit.

By Chris Cillizza, CNN

24 July 17

 

onald Trump's most famous line is "You're fired," which is funny because, as president, Trump has repeatedly shown that he doesn't actually like to fire people.

Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, was let go only after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. (And after Flynn's firing, Trump has expressed regret that he had to go.) White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned Friday but, according to all available reporting, Trump wanted him to stay on even after hiring Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.

The one exception: Trump fired FBI Director James Comey due, according to the President, to his aggressive stance in relation to the Russia investigation.

Which brings us to today. And this tweet from Trump: "So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?"

Trump is calling his own attorney general "beleaguered!" The guy who was his most prominent Senate supporter! The man who helped shape Trump's immigration policies!

(Side note: To show just how much Trump has changed perceptions and expectations of how a president acts, imagine for a second Barack Obama sending this same tweet out about Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. It's literally impossible to conceive of.)

And Monday's tweet was far from the only time in the past week in which Trump has made clear just how he feels about Sessions. In a interview with The New York Times last Wednesday, Trump said "Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else."

Then, over the weekend, Trump tweeted this: "So many people are asking why isn't the A.G. or Special Council looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?"

In the wake of Trump's tweet Monday about the "beleaguered" Sessions, Axios reported that Trump has been mulling bringing in former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as attorney general -- a job which, currently, is occupied.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins, citing two sources, also reported Monday that Trump and Sessions haven't spoken since Trump bashed him to the Times last week.

Add it up and here's what you get: Trump wants Sessions gone. But he doesn't want to swing the proverbial sword. He wants to make Sessions' life so uncomfortable that Sessions throws up his hands and walks away.

Sessions, the day after the Times interview, told reporters -- in the papal plural no less! -- "We love this job. We love this department, and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate."

What does Trump do in the wake of that statement? Ramps up the rhetoric against Sessions so there can be no debate between reasonable people that Trump wants his attorney general to go do something else. But he doesn't do it to Sessions directly; he does it via a serious of public statements and leaks.

Sessions hasn't responded to this latest Trump volley. But, at this point, it is very tough for Sessions to simply ignore the message coming out of the White House. And that message is: We want you gone. So, go.


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College Was Once Free and for the Public Good - What Happened? Print
Monday, 24 July 2017 13:53

Adam writes: "Students didn't have to worry about tuition and debt until higher education became more about personal gain than contributing to society."

Occupy Rally. (photo: Flickr/jjinsf94115)
Occupy Rally. (photo: Flickr/jjinsf94115)

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College Was Once Free and for the Public Good - What Happened?

By Thomas Adam, Yes! Magazine

24 July 17


Students didn’t have to worry about tuition and debt until higher education became more about personal gain than contributing to society.

he promise of free college education helped propel Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination to national prominence. It reverberated during the confirmation hearings for Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, and Sanders continues to push the issue.

In conversations among politicians, college administrators, educators, parents and students, college affordability seems to be seen as a purely financial issue—it’s all about money.

My research into the historical cost of college shows that the roots of the current student debt crisis are neither economic nor financial in origin, but predominantly social. Tuition fees and student loans became an essential part of the equation only as Americans came to believe in an entirely different purpose for higher education.

Cost of a college degree today

For many students, graduation means debt. In 2012, more than 44 million Americans (14 percent of the population) were still paying off student loans. And the average graduate in 2016 left college with more than $37,000 in student loan debt.

Student loan debt has become the second-largest type of personal debt among Americans. Besides leading to depression and anxiety, student loan debt slows economic growth: It prevents young Americans from buying houses and cars and starting families. Economist Alvaro Mezza, among others, has shown a negative correlation between increasing student loan debt and homeownership.

The increase in student loan debt should come as no surprise given the increasing cost of college and the share that students are asked to shoulder. Decreasing state support for colleges over the last two decades caused colleges to raise tuition fees significantly. From 1995 to 2015, tuition and fees at 310 national universities ranked by U.S. News rose considerably, increasing by nearly 180 percent at private schools and more than 225 percent at public schools.

Whatever the reason, tuition has gone up. And students are paying that higher tuition with student loans. These loans can influence students’ decisions about which majors to pick and whether to pursue graduate studies.

Early higher education: A public good

During the 19th century, college education in the United States was offered largely for free. Colleges trained students from middle-class backgrounds as high school teachers, ministers and community leaders who, after graduation, were to serve public needs.

This free tuition model had to do with perceptions about the role of higher education: College education was considered a public good. Students who received such an education would put it to use in the betterment of society. Everyone benefited when people chose to go to college. And because it was considered a public good, society was willing to pay for it—either by offering college education free of charge or by providing tuition scholarships to individual students.

Stanford University, which was founded on the premise of offering college education free of charge to California residents, was an example of the former. Stanford charged no tuition for almost three decades from its opening in 1891 until 1920.

Other colleges, such as the College of William and Mary, offered comprehensive tuition scholarship programs, which covered tuition in exchange for a pledge of the student to engage in some kind of service after graduation. Beginning in 1888, William and Mary provided full tuition scholarships to about a third of its students. In exchange, students receiving this scholarship pledged to teach for two years at a Virginia public school.

And even though the cost for educating students rose significantly in the second half of the 19th century, college administrators such as Harvard President Charles W. Eliot insisted that these costs should not be passed on to students. In a letter to Charles Francis Adams dated June 9, 1904, Eliot wrote, “I want to have the College open equally to men with much money, little money, or no money, provided they all have brains.”

College education becomes a private pursuit

The perception of higher education changed dramatically around 1910. Private colleges began to attract more students from upper-class families—students who went to college for the social experience and not necessarily for learning.

This social and cultural change led to a fundamental shift in the purpose of a college education. What was once a public good designed to advance the welfare of society was becoming a private pursuit for self-aggrandizement. Young people entering college were no longer seen as doing so for the betterment of society, but rather as pursuing personal goals: in particular, enjoying the social setting of private colleges and obtaining a respected professional position upon graduation.

In 1927, John D. Rockefeller began campaigning for charging students the full cost it took to educate them. Further, he suggested that students could shoulder such costs through student loans. Rockefeller and like-minded donors (in particular, William E. Harmon, a wealthy real estate magnate) were quite successful in their campaign. They convinced donors, educators and college administrators that students should pay for their own education because going to college was considered a deeply personal affair. Tuition—and student loans—thus became commonly accepted aspects of the economics of higher education.

The shift in attitude regarding college has also become commonly accepted. Altruistic notions about the advancement of society have generally been pushed aside in favor of the image of college as a vehicle for individual enrichment.

A new social contract

If the United States is looking for alternatives to what some would call a failing funding model for college affordability, the solution may lie in looking further back than the current system, which has been in place since the 1930s.

In the 19th century, communities and the state would foot the bill for college tuition because students were contributing to society. They served the common good by teaching high school for a certain number of years or by taking leadership positions within local communities. A few marginal programs with similar missions (ROTC and Teach for America) still exist, but students participating in these programs are very much in the minority.

Instead, higher education today seems to be about what college can do for you. It’s not about what college students can do for society.

I believe that tuition-free education can only be realized if college education is again reframed as a public good. For this, students, communities, donors and politicians would have to enter into a new social contract that exchanges tuition-free education for public services.


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FOCUS: A Veteran ICE Agent Speaks Out Print
Monday, 24 July 2017 12:19

Blitzer writes: "The agent's decision to allow me to write about our conversations came after learning that ice was making a push, beginning this week, to arrest young undocumented immigrants who were part of a large wave of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border in recent years and who, until now, had been allowed to live in the U.S."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains a man in Los Angeles, in October, 2016. Since Donald Trump took office, three months later, the agency's hard line has worried some employees. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains a man in Los Angeles, in October, 2016. Since Donald Trump took office, three months later, the agency's hard line has worried some employees. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

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A Veteran ICE Agent Speaks Out

By Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker

24 July 17

 

n March, two months after President Trump took office, I received a text message from a veteran agent at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I had been trying to find field agents willing to describe what life was like at the agency in the Trump era. This agent agreed to talk. Over the past four months, we have texted often and spoken on the phone several times. Some of our discussions have been about the specifics of new federal policies aimed at dramatically increasing the number of deportations. At other times, we’ve talked more broadly about how the culture at ICE has shifted. In April, the agent texted me a screen shot of a page from the minutes of a recent meeting, during which a superior had said that it was “the most exciting time to be part of ICE” in the agency’s history. The photo was sent without commentary—the agent just wanted someone on the outside to see it.

The agent, who has worked in federal immigration enforcement since the Clinton Administration, has been unsettled by the new order at ICE. During the campaign, many rank-and-file agents publicly cheered Trump’s pledge to deport more immigrants, and, since Inauguration Day, the Administration has explicitly encouraged them to pursue the undocumented as aggressively as possible. “We’re going to get sued,” the agent told me at one point. “You have guys who are doing whatever they want in the field, going after whoever they want.” At first, the agent spoke to me on the condition that I not publish anything about our conversations. But that has changed. Increasingly angry about the direction in which ICE is moving, the agent agreed last week to let me publish some of the details of our talks, as long as I didn’t include identifying information.

“We used to look at things through the totality of the circumstances when it came to a removal order—that’s out the window,” the agent told me the other day. “I don’t know that there’s that appreciation of the entire realm of what we’re doing. It’s not just the person we’re removing. It’s their entire family. People say, ‘Well, they put themselves in this position because they came illegally.’ I totally understand that. But you have to remember that our job is not to judge. The problem is that now there are lots of people who feel free to feel contempt.”

Like many ICE employees, the agent was a critic of President Barack Obama, whose push to standardize enforcement practice and micromanage agents, particularly during his second term, was a source of frustration at the agency. Yet with Obama gone, and the era of micromanagement over, the agent sees long-standing standards being discarded and basic protocols questioned. “I have officers who are more likely now to push back,” the agent said. “I’d never have someone say, ‘Why do I have to call an interpreter? Why don’t they speak English?’ Now I get it frequently. I get this from people who are younger. That’s one group. And I also get it from people who are ethnocentric: ‘Our way is the right way—I shouldn’t have to speak in your language. This is America.’ ” It all adds up, the agent said, “to contempt that I’ve never seen so rampant towards the aliens.”

The agent’s decision to allow me to write about our conversations came after learning that ICE was making a push, beginning this week, to arrest young undocumented immigrants who were part of a large wave of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border in recent years and who, until now, had been allowed to live in the U.S. Rather than detaining these young people, the government had placed them in the care of families around the country. Most of them are trying to lead new lives as American transplants, going to school and working. ICE now plans to pursue those who have turned eighteen since crossing the border, and who, as a result, qualify for detention as legal adults. “I don’t see the point in it,” the agent said. “The plan is to take them back into custody, and then figure it out. I don’t understand it. We’re doing it because we can, and it bothers the hell out of me.”

The agent went on, “The whole idea is targeting kids. I know that technically they meet the legal definition of being adults. Fine. But if they were my kids travelling in a foreign country, I wouldn’t be O.K. with this. We’re not doing what we tell people we do. If you look next month, or at the end of this month, at the people in custody, it’s people who’ve been here for years. They’re supposed to be in high school.”

The agent was especially concerned about a new policy that allows ICE to investigate cases of immigrants who may have paid smugglers to bring their children or relatives into the country. ICE considers these family members guilty of placing children “directly in harm’s way,” as one spokeswoman recently put it, and the agency will hold them “accountable for their role in these conspiracies.” According to ICE, these measures will help combat “a constant humanitarian threat,” but the agent said that rationale was just a pretext to increase arrests and eventually deport more people. “We seem to be targeting the most vulnerable people, not the worst.” The agent also believes that the policy will make it harder for the government to handle unaccompanied children who show up at the border. “You’re going to have kids stuck in detention because parents are too scared of being prosecuted to want to pick them up!” the agent said.

U.S. immigration courts are facing a backlog of half a million cases, with only a limited number of judges available to hear them and issue rulings. “We still have to make decisions based on a responsible use of the government’s resources—you can’t lock everybody up,” the agent said. “We’re putting more people into that overburdened system just because we can. There’s just this school of thought that, well, we can do what we want.”

Before this year, the agent had never spoken to the media. “I have a couple of colleagues that I can kind of talk to, but not many,” the agent said. “This has been a difficult year for many of us.” These people, not just at ICE but also at other federal agencies tasked with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, are “trying to figure out how to minimize the damage.” It isn’t clear what, exactly, they can do under the circumstances. “Immigration is a pendulum—it swings to the left sometimes, or it swings to the right,” the agent told me last week. “But there was a normal range. Now people are bringing their own opinions into work.” In the agent’s view, ICE is a changed agency.

“I like predictability,” the agent said. “I like being able to go into work and have faith in my senior managers and the Administration, and to know that, regardless of their political views, at the end of the day they’re going to do something that’s appropriate. I don’t feel that way anymore.”


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