FOCUS: If It's All About the Trump Brand, Let's Jam It Up
Friday, 09 June 2017 11:12
Klein writes: "Little will change until we stop buying what lifestyle brands are selling. And that means we'll have to form our identity based on what we do and what we believe, not on what we buy."
American business magnate Donald Trump (2-R), his sons Eric Trump (L) and Donald Trump Jr. (2-L), and daughter Ivanka Trump (R) pose for photographers during the ground breaking ceremony of the Trump International Hotel project at the Old Post Office. (photo: Getty)
If It's All About the Trump Brand, Let's Jam It Up
By Naomi Klein, The Boston Globe
09 June 17
ell, that didn’t take long. On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans to launch a chain of three-star hotels to target the millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump but could never afford his gilded hotels, condos, or clubs.
Until now, Trump’s middle-class base had to settle for purchasing little chips off the Trump brand: a bottle of water, a steak, a made-in-China tie or, of course, a hat. But there is more gold in them thar voters, and it is positively un-Trumpian to leave it unmined.
Enter American Idea, “a new midscale brand” hotel chain whose first properties will be in Mississippi, a red state where Trump won 18 percentage points more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton. This is not just an attempt at crashing the Comfort Inn niche by wrapping it in stars and stripes. It’s also the most vivid window yet into the myriad ways the Trump family is transforming the presidency into a for-profit family business, annihilating the line between government and their web of brands.
It turns out that while the Trump kids were on the campaign trail last year, they weren’t just stumping for their father — they were conducting market research on ways to profit from Trump voters. The sons would return to Trump Tower and report on the quaint and old-timey tastes enjoyed in “real America,” as Eric Trump described it on “Good Morning America” earlier this week.
As Donald Jr. put it, he realized “there’s something here, there’s a market here that we’ve been missing our entire lives by focusing only on the high end.” And there were more perks to tagging along on the campaign trail. They also met people who donated to the Trump campaign, and some of those very people are now the first partners for this new venture.
So let’s unpack that a bit. In Trump’s world, voters are future customers, campaign donors are future investors, and election results are a rich vein of consumer data. But of course there is a firewall separating the presidency from the Trump Organization, or so we are told. Never mind the endless presidential trips to Trump-branded properties. Never mind Keyllanne Conway and “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff!” Never mind Trump’s plug for Mar-a-Lago’s chocolate cake inserted into a description of a Syrian missile strike. Never mind Ivanka using her White House platform to hawk a book that is itself about hawking her brand. Never mind the millions Melania reportedly collected in a British libel settlement, in part due to damage caused to her would-be line of lifestyle products.
For the past five months, I’ve been writing a book that tries to put this presidency in the context of some of the economic and social trends that paved the way for Trump’s rise. And there are many such threads to follow, but a major one is the relatively new business model that the Trump family harnesses for vast wealth. That model is based on the idea that successful corporations aren’t actually selling products but brands — desirable “lifestyles.” And consumers aren’t really buying products, they’re buying ideas — markers of aspirational identity and membership in a circle of belonging. This is what the Trumps have always sold: a dream of themselves, projected back to their consumers. And having merged the Trump brand with the White House, they are now marketing “real” America back to itself.
Ethics experts keep urging Trump to separate himself completely from his business holdings by selling them or setting up a blind trust. But it’s clear the Trumps can’t even entertain the concept. They are their brands. Trump and his family have no idea where their commercial identities end and their personal (let alone public sector) identities begin. Even as the president and his adviser-daughter insist they are no longer involved in their businesses (though they still profit from them), their commercial avatars are busy replicating around the world, refracting through a commercial house of mirrors as the brand version of Donald and Ivanka continues to sell condos and golf club memberships — and offers Memorial Day tips on making champagne popsicles.
Why does this matter? Because just as Trump sees his voters as consumers, his supporters see their president less as a representative from whom they have a right to demand accountability and more as a brand. That’s why the self-dealing scandals don’t stick: Trump is just playing by the same lucrative rules that have reshaped the global economy. He’s fully embodying his boss brand, making money wherever he can, getting the best possible deal out of being president.
There are ways to undercut this: by making Trump look less like a boss (think #PresidentBannon), and by hurting his bottom line by boycotting and otherwise bruising his brand. And I’m all for trying. In refusing to divest from his business holdings, Trump has left himself wide open to this kind of consumer pressure.
But what about the next brand-name billionaire candidate out to leverage consumer relationships into votes? Ultimately, little will change until we stop buying what lifestyle brands are selling. And that means we’ll have to form our identity based on what we do and what we believe, not on what we buy. It may sound like an un-American Idea, but perhaps its time has come.
Toobin writes: "President Trump appears to be guilty of obstruction of justice. That's the only rational conclusion to be reached if James Comey's opening statement for his planned testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, is to be believed."
Former FBI director James Comey testifying in Washington on May 3, 2017. (photo: AP)
James Comey's Remarkable Story About Donald Trump
By Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
09 June 17
resident Trump appears to be guilty of obstruction of justice. That’s the only rational conclusion to be reached if James Comey’s opening statement for his planned testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, is to be believed. The lurch of the Trump Presidency from one crisis to the next scandal produces a kind of bombshell-induced numbness, but that should not prevent us from appreciating the magnitude of Comey’s statement.
The statement, alongside other established facts, doesn’t just lay out evidence; it tells a story. In this tale, the President knows how much power he possesses and dangles it before those who serve him. The F.B.I. director was in the middle of a ten-year term, which was designed to give him some insulation from political pressure, but there was a catch: Trump could still fire him. And Trump clearly knew it, as he repeatedly demanded Comey’s personal loyalty. An early conversation, on January 27th, over dinner in the Green Room of the White House, set the tone: Comey was to answer to Trump, or the F.B.I. director would be gone. As Comey put it, he saw that Trump was trying to set up a “patronage relationship.”
Soon enough, Trump called on Comey’s loyalty. The President was worried about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, and he wanted a premature exoneration from Comey. The director hedged, clearly uncomfortable with the demand, but finally told Trump, in rather convoluted ways, that he was not a subject of the investigation—at least not yet.
But the Russia probe continued to worry the President, and soon he had more demands. The climax of Comey’s statement is his cinematic recounting of a meeting with the President in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017. The drama begins after the meeting, when the President instructs the other officials present, including Vice-President Mike Pence, to leave the room. Trump even takes the extraordinary step of asking the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who was Comey’s boss, to go, in order to allow the President to speak with the director alone. Trump then shoos Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, out of the Oval Office, too. (When Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, looks in, a while later, Trump also asks him to stay out of the conversation.) This insistence on a one-on-one meeting suggests what prosecutors like to call “consciousness of guilt.” All these high-ranking officials had clearance to hear anything that Trump might want to say to the director, so the fact that the President wanted them out of earshot would seem to indicate that he knew that what he was telling Comey was wrong—that it was, indeed, an obstruction of justice.
When the two men were alone, Comey writes, Trump asked him to help out the just-fired national-security adviser, Michael Flynn. In Trump’s typical scattershot fashion, he started talking about Flynn, but segued to the subject of leaks, before getting back on topic. In the key passage of Comey’s statement, he writes:
The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice-President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.”
This part of Comey’s testimony, if it’s accurate, is a smoking gun. The President is instructing his subordinate to stop an F.B.I. investigation of Trump’s close associate.
Comey told the F.B.I. leadership team about Trump’s outrageously improper request, but he did something more, too. When Comey went to see his direct boss, Sessions, he made an urgent request:
I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened—him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind—was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply.
The language is uncharacteristic for the lawyerly F.B.I. director: he implored his boss to put a stop to the President’s meddling. But Sessions, a more loyal soldier, said nothing.
The most important piece of evidence in the obstruction case against Trump is actually never mentioned in Comey’s opening statement. That evidence is what occurred on May 9th. Comey had not acceded to the President’s request that he cease the investigation of Flynn and the connection to Russia, and he paid the price with his job. Later, Trump all but confessed that he had rid himself of this meddlesome director because of Russia. He told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I decided to just do it”—to fire Comey—“I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.’ “ The day after the firing, the President boasted to the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, saying, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
There is, of course, much more to know about this story. Did Trump use other government officials to try to stymie the Russia investigation? During an Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, senators pressed Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, about their contacts with Trump on the issue; they refused to answer. They may eventually tell what they know—as, surely, will others. But the story is now complete in its outline, if not its details, and Trump’s culpability is clear to anyone who cares to look.
No, Bill Maher Shouldn't Be Fired for Using the N-Word
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38164"><span class="small">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter</span></a>
Thursday, 08 June 2017 14:59
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "Lenny Bruce's dream that we could defuse the word-bomb is still far from a reality. Which is why Bill Maher's joking use of it on the June 2 edition of Real Time has caused such a backlash."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (photo: The Mercatus Center/George Mason University)
No, Bill Maher Shouldn't Be Fired for Using the N-Word
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter
08 June 17
"Intent is important," writes the NBA great and THR columnist, and the HBO host's use of the word merely shows poor taste — and it could even raise awareness of today's race issues.
olitical comedian Lenny Bruce, who was often arrested for the provocative material in his act, once theorized that if everyone used the N-word matter-of-factly in daily life, it would be robbed of its power to “make a 6-year-old black kid cry” when someone at school used it on him. In a way, that’s exactly what some in the African-American community have done by using the word freely among themselves when addressing each other. But in times when hate crimes are on the rise, when we have an administration actively and gleefully dismantling civil rights gains, and when the word is being scrawled on LeBron James’ home, Lenny Bruce’s dream that we could defuse the word-bomb is still far from a reality.
Which is why Bill Maher's joking use of it on the June 2 edition of Real Time has caused such a backlash. There are plenty of contexts in which a white person using the N-word would be appropriate and inoffensive. Maher used the word once before while appearing on Larry King’s CNN show when commenting on Newt Gingrich’s accusation that then-President Obama held a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview.” Maher responded that “Kenyan, of course, was code for n—er.” In that situation, he was condemning Gingrich’s coy racism with a harshness that was justified and incisive. This time, however, was not the same.
No social commentary or political insight. Just bumbling shock in pursuit of a lame joke.
The reason the N-word is so volatile is that it carries hundreds of years of poisonous baggage. It is associated with how African-Americans were perceived as less human than whites, and it represents the atrocities committed as a result. The word evokes kidnapping, rape, mutilation, humiliation, forced poverty and murder. Even now, it implies a physical threat. We are sensitive to its use — and have a right to be — because the effects of that word and all it represents remain a part of our daily lives.
But we also have the responsibility not to punish every time it is used in poor taste rather than maliciously, because that muddies the waters regarding the reason for our outrage. Intent is important. Clearly, Maher's intention was not to demean blacks. To put it in perspective, compare Maher with Phil Stair, the public official from Flint, Michigan, who was recently recorded using the N-word while blaming black people who "don't pay their bills" for the water crisis facing the city. He has since resigned. A major difference between people like Maher and people like Stair is that the public official’s bias has a direct and practical effect of the people he represents. His is a betrayal of the principles the country stands for.
Was Maher insensitive? Absolutely. Inappropriate? Definitely. Smug in appropriating the word for cheap humor? Check. Yet, there was no malevolent intent.
Maher is a worthy and incisive voice in political humor who made a mistake and apologized. Inadvertently, he caused the issue to be debated, raising awareness and hopefully sensitizing people. I just wish it was for an insight rather than an insult.
Donald Trump & Andrew Cuomo Are Brothers in Reactor Disaster
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6004"><span class="small">Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Thursday, 08 June 2017 14:42
Wasserman writes: "Donald Trump and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have joined forces in destroying our economy and environment."
Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo (left) and Donald Trump (right). (photo: Getty)
Donald Trump & Andrew Cuomo Are Brothers in Reactor Disaster
By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
08 June 17
onald Trump and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have joined forces in destroying our economy and environment.
While Trump wages global war on the climate, Cuomo demands a statewide bailout meant to keep failed nuke reactors on line until they melt and/or explode, Fukushima-style.
Trump and Cuomo are both are apostles of radioactive obsolescence.
The global climate treaty Trump wants to break has been signed by every nation on Earth except Syria and Nicaragua (which wants stronger terms).
Trump is globalizing the US legacy of breaking 800 treaties with indigenous peoples.
Like America’s indigenous tribes, the nations of the world will never trust us again.
Trump has shredded our global standing, as Germany’s Angela Merkel (CEO of the world’s #4 economy) has pronounced us an unreliable trading partner and China (#2) moves to partner directly with the European Union.
As Trump sabotages the dollar, watch him blame our economic death spiral on Muslims, commies, immigrants, and people of color.
Trump’s wedge between the US and Germany is a dream come true for Putin’s petro-mafia.
So is his attack on climate science as he hands our techno-future to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas), the obsolete monster of a failed 20th century past.
Trump’s hatred of Solartopian technologies — solar, wind, tidal, wave, ocean thermal, geothermal, LED, efficiency, electric and hydrogen cars, advanced batteries, etc. — leaves the US out of the biggest job-creating transition in human history.
Through it all, Trump tweets his “love” for nuclear power.
With him on that is the alleged “liberal,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo wants New York ratepayers to pay $7.6 billion in raised electric rates to feed collapsing upstate nukes that could soon melt and/or explode.
The rate hikes would force New Yorkers as far away as Long Island to pay for uncompetitive loser nukes that supply them zero electricity.
In part because of a deal cut by Cuomo’s father Mario, Long Island still suffers from $7 billion wasted on the defunct Shoreham reactor.
None of the four upstate reactors Cuomo2 wants to bail out can compete with new wind or solar, which create far more jobs.
Tesla’s “Buffalo Billion” solar shingle factory will create 500 permanent jobs in northwestern New York, plus some 1400 spin-offs.
Ten such plants would create some 5,000 direct jobs, double those at Cuomo’s four loser nukes, with thousands more in spin-offs from cheap green power.
While Germany, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Iceland, Denmark, South Korea and others head to 100% post-nuke Solartopian futures, China is investing $360 billion in renewables, and India is following suit.
Trump attacks such investments here while Cuomo’s bailout cripples them in New York.
The final four US nukes under construction (in Georgia and South Carolina) have bankrupted Westinghouse, maybe Toshiba, and may soon be cancelled.
The 99 licensed loser US reactors all teeter at the brink of economic/ecological catastrophe.
But Cuomo’s New York bailout is a model for owners to gouge billions from ratepayers to keep them open.
Cuomo says he’ll shut two reactors at Indian Point, near New York City, but still wants that Trump-style public handout.
No commercial reactor has liability insurance, so the next melt-down/explosion could bankrupt us all, with none of Trump/Cuomo’s industry cronies held responsible.
Cuomo’s bailout is being challenged in court. Trump’s legal challenges are legion.
Together, these brothers in reactor disaster are the ultimate radioactive Luddites.
Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia! Our Green-powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org along with Harvey’s History of the United States. The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections, written with Bob Fitrakis, is at www.freepress.org.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36478"><span class="small">John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Thursday, 08 June 2017 10:53
Kiriakou writes: "The arrest this week of NSA contractor Reality Winner on Espionage Act charges of providing national defense information to The Intercept is the clearest evidence to date that President Donald Trump intends to continue former president Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers and transparency."
Reality Winner worked for an NSA contractor and has been arrested for allegedly leaking a top secret NSA document. (photo: Facebook)
What Reality Winner Did Was Heroic
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
08 June 17
he arrest this week of NSA contractor Reality Winner on Espionage Act charges of providing national defense information to The Intercept is the clearest evidence to date that President Donald Trump intends to continue former president Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers and transparency. It also calls into question the professionalism of The Intercept’s journalists, as well as the professional integrity of reporters Richard Esposito and Matthew Cole.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a history with both Esposito and Cole. Esposito and I were friends for many years, and we worked together at ABC News from 2008 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2012. My history with Cole is far more sordid. Cole approached me in 2008 to say that he was writing a book on the CIA’s rendition program. He sent me a list of a dozen names and asked if I could introduce him to anybody on the list. I told him truthfully that I was not involved in renditions and that I did not know anybody on the list. He followed up with a second list, and then a third. I finally said that he obviously knew the issue far better than I did and that I just couldn’t be helpful. Finally, he said, “What about the guy you mentioned in your [first] book? I think his name was ‘John.’” I said, “You’re talking about John Doe. He must be retired by now and living somewhere in Virginia.” That conversation was a crime. I confirmed the name of a former colleague to Cole. Even though I had no idea that colleague was still undercover, it was still a felony.
But the story gets much worse. As it turned out, Cole was never working on any book. Instead, he was secretly acting as an investigator for the Guantanamo defense attorneys. He took John Doe’s name, sent it to a fellow investigator, John Sifton, and Sifton sent it to the attorneys. The attorneys then put the name in a sealed, classified motion asking the judge for permission to interview Doe. The Guantanamo judge immediately recognized that the name was classified and he called the FBI. The FBI subpoenaed the defense attorneys’ emails and traced one back to Sifton. Sifton either cooperated with the FBI (he later testified against me in the grand jury) or the FBI subpoenaed his emails, and traced the information back to Cole.
The next step is still a mystery. The FBI either subpoenaed Cole’s emails – those of a working journalist – or Cole ratted me out to the FBI. Neither Cole nor the FBI have ever said what happened.
And it wasn’t just me who Cole manipulated. In the course of my case, my investigators found ten pages of handwritten notes from Cole, provided to us by a friendly attorney, wherein Cole had spoken with a disgruntled former CIA employee who had eventually given him the names of ten different undercover CIA officers. Cole also passed these names to the Guantanamo defense attorneys, whose investigators then photographed these officers at a secret CIA site so that the Guantanamo detainees they represented could identify them. That’s not journalism. It’s activism. It’s also highly unethical.
Fast-forward seven years. The Intercept promotes itself as the go-to place for national security whistleblowers. The outlet even has its PGP encryption keys on its website, where it encourages national security professionals to send in classified documents. That’s a great idea and one that I support fully. Apparently, that’s what Reality Winner did. She sent The Intercept an NSA analysis of Russian involvement in hacking related to the 2016 presidential election. Esposito and Cole, however, in an ill-advised attempt to “authenticate” the document, sent it to one of their “NSA contacts,” who immediately alerted authorities. Winner was arrested mere hours after the Esposito/Cole article was published.
How did the FBI zero in on Winner so quickly? Admittedly, she made mistakes. She initially contacted The Intercept from a work computer. And when she finally sent the document in, she left identifying information on it. More importantly – and this is something that every journalist who purports to be a specialist in national security ought to know – NSA marks every single document with microscopic tags. When an NSA employee prints a document, there are tiny markings indicating that that specific employee has printed it. When Esposito and Cole showed a copy of the original document. to their NSA contact, they had sealed Winner’s fate.
And now Winner faces charges under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law designed to combat spies and saboteurs. It’s like using an iron fist to kill a fly. As recently as the Clinton administration, such revelations of classified information were dealt with administratively and internally. When I was at the CIA, I worked with a woman who was accused of providing classified information on Iran to a CNN reporter with whom she was having an affair. The leak was traced to her, she admitted passing the information, and she was suspended without pay for six weeks and barred from promotion for three years. Her career eventually recovered, and she was promoted into the Senior Intelligence Service. There was no Espionage Act prosecution for her.
We now know where Trump stands on whistleblower issues. He stands with Obama. He stands as an enemy of transparency. Let me be clear: Reality Winner is a whistleblower. I don’t care what her motivation for disclosing the document was. It’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that the American people have a right to know what she revealed. Why is it a secret that the Russians were working to elect Donald Trump? There is a public interest in disseminating that information.
Winner faces the possibility of many years in prison. But what she did was heroic. The American people will come to recognize that. And in the meantime, she’s going to take her place in a long line of truth-tellers. Esposito and Cole, meanwhile, should see the unemployment line.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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ell, that didn’t take long. On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans to launch a 
resident Trump appears to be guilty of obstruction of justice. That’s the only rational conclusion to be reached if James Comey’s opening statement for his planned testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, is to be believed. The lurch of the Trump Presidency from one crisis to the next scandal produces a kind of bombshell-induced numbness, but that should not prevent us from appreciating the magnitude of Comey’s statement.
onald Trump and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have joined forces in destroying our economy and environment.
he 
