同情特朗普

ccc · 2018-10-29

(CNN) President Donald Trump is preparing to dial up the intensity of his political schedule in the final week ahead of critical midterm elections, even as hate acts have rattled the nation and thrown new scrutiny on his deeply divisive style of campaigning.
Already, the President has shown little willingness to curtail his political schedule. Officials have told CNN there is little to no consideration of abandoning the ambitious final week plans that will have the President on the stump most of the next seven days.

Trump's battle plan for the final week includes a three-day sprint to the finish line, with multiple events a day slated for the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before voters cast their ballots, a source close to the process said. Another source familiar with discussions said the White House is considering a joint rally with both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on the eve of Election Day.

But a hate-fueled attack on a Pennsylvania synagogue, a politically motivated attempt to bomb Democratic figures, and a seemingly racially motivated double homicide in Kentucky -- all occurring within two weeks of the election -- have complicated the President's plans to close out midterm season. Torn between his role as the GOP's most valuable surrogate and his duty to reassure a divided country, Trump has attempted to perform both responsibilities simultaneously -- to mixed reviews.

After a shooting Saturday at a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 dead, Trump opted to leave the White House anyway for a pair of events in Indiana and Illinois while the tragedy was still unfolding. He received briefings on the situation en route to an agricultural event that he attempted to turn into a venue for responding to the shooting before awkwardly pivoting back to the speech he'd come to deliver. The tensions created by a massacre so close to Election Day were on full display later in the evening, when Trump openly toyed with the prospect of canceling a campaign event in Illinois before deciding to proceed as scheduled to the rally -- where he then wove presidential statements of unity in with the red meat he frequently tosses to his supporters.

Trump told reporters on Saturday he planned to visit Pittsburgh this week, though he didn't specify a day. White House schedulers will need to time the visit amid a heavy slate of campaign appearances that officials indicated would not be canceled or rescheduled.

Trump has made a point of telling crowds during the past week that he was toning down his rhetoric in a show of respect. But his crowds have reacted with disappointment, including loud groans on Saturday evening inside an airplane hangar in southern Illinois.

"I had a feeling you might say that," Trump said, before launching into familiar attacks on Democrats, the news media, and his vanquished 2016 rival Hillary Clinton.

The tragedies have threatened to knock Trump off what he had hoped would be his message heading into the home stretch of the midterms: immigration. White House aides had eyed having Trump deliver a major immigration speech in the week before the election as he sought to channel images of a Central American migrant caravan heading to the US into a rallying cry for his supporters.

But the President has struggled to control the conversation amid fallout from the shooting and attempted bombing spree, and he has expressed frustration with the focus on the effects of his rhetoric in the aftermath of the attacks.

The President's team had laid out a number of states Trump could hit during the last week of the midterms, but waited to finalize which of those options they'd choose as rally destinations for as long as possible so they could base their decisions on the freshest polls. Trump's political aides are effectively triaging races based on which Republican candidates need his help the most, and will attempt to direct him where his presence can move more numbers.

With so little time left on the clock, that may be in statewide races. One source familiar with the planning said a number of the sites under consideration for the final days of campaigning are in states where Republicans want to defend or make a play for Senate seats. And a fundraiser Trump attended Thursday evening for three Republican candidates running in open-seat House races will likely mark the President's final effort to raise money this cycle as the party's focus turns to closing arguments, the source said.

Trump has rallies on the books next week in Florida, Missouri and West Virginia -- all states with Senate races where Republicans are looking to flip a Democratic seat.

Another trip to Montana?
Trump's team is considering yet another visit to Montana the week before Election Day, signaling their increasing confidence in Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's vulnerability. For the President, that race is more personal than most: Tester played a leading role in sinking the nomination of the presidential physician, Ronny Jackson, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in the spring. Two White House aides said the President has continued to vent about Tester and harbors a personal grudge against him.

Aides claim Trump's visits to Montana have helped shift momentum in favor of Matt Rosendale, the GOP state auditor whose challenge to Tester was considered a long shot until recently. Trump rallied in Montana on September 6 and October 18.

In a state Trump won by more than 20 points, Tester's slim lead in recent polls is likely cold comfort for Democrats fighting to preserve their hopes of retaking the Senate. Those hopes have dimmed in the wake of Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation; the bitter battle over his Supreme Court nomination awoke sleepy Republican electorates across the country and tightened races Democrats had viewed as winnable contests just last month. But some Republicans -- including the President himself -- have expressed concerns that the chilling acts of violence dominating headlines over the past week will blunt the momentum GOP candidates had begun to see.

Tester's race is emblematic of a broader phenomenon affecting Senate contests around the country. While Republican candidates struggle to fight off robust Democratic challenges in more than two dozen House districts, they rode that late surge of enthusiasm to positions of relative safety in several states where Democrats had hoped to defend or even pick off a Senate seat.

Other states the President might visit
Those include Arizona, where Democrats hope Rep. Kyrsten Sinema can defeat GOP Rep. Martha McSally to flip the Republican-held seat Sen. Jeff Flake will vacate when he retires after this cycle. But Sinema's lead in earlier polls has shrunk as McSally's campaign picks up steam after a bruising primary, and the GOP congresswoman will head into the final week of the midterms with what Republicans hope is a real shot at winning.

In Nevada, Republicans had initially feared Sen. Dean Heller was doomed to lose his seat in a state Trump did not win and a year when the political landscape is tilted toward Democrats. Heller has managed to stay ahead of Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen in recent polls, however, and is now seen as capable of surviving.

And in Tennessee, Democrats are still projecting optimism that their popular former governor, Phil Bredesen, can tip the seat presently held by Sen. Bob Corker away from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican running to replace him. Trump is considering a visit to Tennessee in the final days of campaigning, revealing Republican hopes that Blackburn can keep the seat in the GOP's column.

Even Senate seats Democrats did not expect to lose over the summer have become increasingly competitive as Election Day approaches. For example, Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana has slipped in recent surveys -- particularly following his decision to vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation.

The White House and Republicans appear increasingly bullish that they will not only hold the upper chamber, but expand their currently slim majority by knocking off some Democrats in states Trump won.

But the House is a different story for Republicans, who have struggled to compete with Democrats this cycle in fundraising, enthusiasm and incumbent retention.

White House aides have privately conceded that the numbers point toward Republicans likely losing their House majority, albeit by a smaller margin than some once feared.

Trump has filled his schedule and Twitter feed over the past few weeks with support for struggling congressional candidates -- but his intervention isn't helpful everywhere that GOP candidates trail. In a cluster of Republican-held seats around the Los Angeles media market, for example, Trump's assistance is not viewed as beneficial for embattled incumbents fighting to hold on in an increasingly progressive state.

Aides say Trump has enjoyed the pace of midterm campaigning and relishes discussions about individual races and strategy.
But his usual tone on the trail -- which thousands of people flock to his rallies to hear -- is an ill fit for the sensitive national moment Trump finds himself facing just days before voting begins. Several Republicans in key races, however, are polling so close to their Democratic opponents that the enthusiasm a Trump visit would inspire could be the only thing that puts them over the top on Election Day.

Meanwhile, Pence will crisscross the country himself the week before Election Day, with Ohio, Kansas City, Wisconsin and even Alabama for fundraising on his schedule, a source familiar with the planning said.

The Vice President will also campaign in Michigan for John James, the Republican challenging Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, as he winnows away at her lead. While James' chances of victory are still considered slim, the source said Pence and other Republicans are still interested in running up the GOP candidate's margins "even if it's just getting it as close as it can be to help his future in the party."

Trump has also tweeted recently about James' surprisingly strong showing in polls. He still trails the Democratic incumbent by what many believe to be an insurmountable deficit.

ccc · 2018-10-29

What is there left to know about Donald Trump? Robert Mueller, various state officials, and a legion of reporters around the country are dedicated to penetrating any stubborn mysteries that still linger, yet who can argue that there is insufficient evidence to make a rational judgment about the character of the man, the nature of his Presidency, and the climate he has done so much to create and befoul?

Last week, with the midterm elections fast approaching, law-enforcement agents pored over an accumulating pile of crude explosive devices that had been sent to some of the President’s most prominent critics: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, George Soros, Robert De Niro, Tom Steyer, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and, at the CNN offices in New York, John Brennan and James Clapper. A tinfoil-hat brigade of reactionaries immediately insisted that the cunning “Democrat Party” had run a “false flag” plot designed to boost its chances on Election Day. On Friday, near Fort Lauderdale, F.B.I. officials arrested a suspect named Cesar Altieri Sayoc, a man in his mid-fifties with an extensive criminal record. Officials also seized the suspect’s van, which was plastered with pro-Trump stickers, as well as one that read “CNN Sucks” and another that had a picture of Hillary Clinton in the crosshairs of a gun.

Law enforcement will continue to investigate the incident in the days ahead. But what’s already clear is that it occurred at a moment of tragic division and conspiracy-mongering generated, foremost and daily, by the President of the United States. The right has no monopoly on insult and incivility—the online universe can be a sewer of spite—but there is no real equivalence: no modern President has adopted and weaponized such malevolent rhetoric as a lingua franca.

Trump is a masterful demagogue of the entertainment age. His instruments are resentment, sarcasm, unbounded insult, casual mendacity, and the swaggering assertion of dominance. From his desk in the Oval Office, on Twitter, and at political rallies across the country, he spews poison into the atmosphere. Trump is an agent of climate change, an unceasing generator of toxic gas that raises the national temperature.

No one suggests that he is a perpetrator, but pipe bombs as a tool of political intimidation do not arrive unexpectedly. They come after the President’s remarks on “birtherism,” Mexican “rapists,” and Charlottesville; after “enemy of the people” and “Lock Her Up!” They come after he has mocked the disabled and victims of sexual violence, after he has praised many of the world’s autocrats and diminished democratic allies. Violence, for him, is a source of titillation. Recently, Trump rallied Montana Republicans by extolling their incumbent congressman, Greg Gianforte—“He’s my guy”—not because Gianforte had devised a piece of legislation for the common good but because he had body-slammed a reporter to the ground. “This is actually exactly why my father won,” Eric Trump said recently on Fox News. He is “un-P.C.,” not a “perfectly scripted politician.”

To be unscripted implies a kind of joyful spontaneity, but Trump’s ramblings always come laced with a thread of malice. His outrages are not mistakes; they are deliberate and a matter of pride. (“I know words. I have the best words.”) Speaking in the Oval Office last week, he riffed weirdly, yet furiously, about the great “caravan” of migrants—potential terrorists!—surging ever closer toward the American frontier. “Over the course of the year, over the course of a number of years, they’ve intercepted many people from the Middle East, they’ve intercepted ISIS, they’ve intercepted all sorts of people, they’ve intercepted good ones and bad ones, they’ve intercepted wonderful people from the Middle East and they’ve intercepted bad ones. They’ve intercepted wonderful people from South America and from other parts further south.”

At a rally in Wisconsin, on Wednesday, the President reacted to the news of the multiple bombs with a barely perfunctory call for a “civil tone.” Of course, he didn’t mean it, not remotely. He made it plain that civility is for suckers, a joke. “By the way, do you see how nice I’m behaving tonight?” he said, with a smirk. “Have you ever seen this? We’re all behaving very well.” The next morning, in a characteristically brazen tweet, Trump amped up the toxicity. A bomb had been sent to a media outlet. The fault was the media’s. “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he wrote. “Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” At 3 A.M. on Friday, he tweeted his fury at CNN.

When the leaders of the Republican Party first acquainted themselves with Trump’s rhetoric and character a few years ago, many of them were appalled. Ted Cruz, after hearing Trump insult his wife’s appearance and insinuate that his father bore some responsibility for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, called his rival a “pathological liar,” a “snivelling coward.” But, after Cruz became one more casualty of the 2016 Republican primaries, and reckoned that he could not hold his Senate seat while attacking Trump, he, like almost every other light of the “party of Lincoln,” capitulated. The G.O.P. is now Ted Cruz writ large, a political party that has debased itself in the image of its standard-bearer.

The midterm elections are being held in an atmosphere of immense national stress. It could only be so when the singular actor in the drama is Donald Trump, who thrives on the idea that American life is a daily cliffhanger, in which the hero bravely sets out to deepen the divide between his supporters and everyone else, to dismantle international agreements and alliances, and to protect corporate interests over the interests of working people and the natural world. There are, unquestionably, countless local and regional issues being debated, but, above all, this election is a referendum on Trump, a contest between his base and those who feel that it is in the national interest to establish at least some brake—a new majority in the House of Representatives, a new crop of governors and state legislators—to slow his disintegration of American life and his despoilment of the national spirit. Two years ago, the prospect of a Trump Presidency represented an emergency. Tens of millions of voters found a reason to stay home. This year, the polls are tight. The stakes cannot be overstated. ♦

New Person · 2018-10-30

Thousands signed a letter saying Trump was not welcome in Pittsburgh. He plans to visit anyway.
More than 35,000 people have signed an open letter to President Trump from the leaders of a Pittsburgh-based Jewish group who say the president will not be welcome in the city unless he denounces white nationalism and stops “targeting” minorities after a mass shooting Saturday at a local synagogue left 11 dead.

Nevertheless, the White House announced Trump would travel to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, ignoring the letter as well as a plea from Pittsburgh’s mayor that the president at least refrain from visiting “while we are burying the dead.” The first of the funerals for the 11 shooting victims is expected to take place Tuesday.

The open letter, which was published and shared on Sunday, was written by 11 members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc, a national organization for progressive Jews focused on social justice, following what is being called the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. The shooting at Tree of Life synagogue also left several people injured, including law enforcement.

“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence."

Subscribe to the Post Most newsletter: Today’s most popular stories on The Washington Post

The letter continued: “Our Jewish community is not the only group you have targeted. You have also deliberately undermined the safety of people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Yesterday’s massacre is not the first act of terror you incited against a minority group in our country.”

Full Screen
Slideshow by photo services

The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the letter.

Trump has continued tweeting incendiary statements since the synagogue massacre, indicating he does not intend to tone down his rhetoric. On Sunday night and Monday morning, the president blamed “Fake News” for causing division, hatred and “great anger” in the country. He reinstated his controversial branding of the press as “the true Enemy of the People.”

In a subsequent tweet, Trump congratulated the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right nationalist with a history of denigrating women, gays and minorities. He also once again amplified unsubstantiated statements about the Central American migrant caravan, claiming without evidence there were gang members and “some very bad people” mixed into the group and warning it was an impending “invasion” of the United States.

During a television appearance Monday morning, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway responded to another request for the president to stay away from Pittsburgh from Lynette Lederman, the former president of Tree of Life synagogue, who has said she considers Trump a “purveyor of hate speech.”

“I know that she’s very grief stricken, I can imagine, and my heartfelt condolences go to her, and everybody in that congregation regardless of politics,” Conway said on CNN. “Many people are welcoming the president to go there and to help heal.”

© Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP President Trump at the White House on Friday. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
On Saturday, Trump strongly condemned the shooting as “pure evil,” adding the “vile, hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism” and all other forms of prejudice must be rejected, The Washington Post reported. The president also announced he would be making a visit to Pittsburgh.

News of the president’s possible travel plans did not sit well with Joshua Friedman, who is one of the leaders of Bend the Arc’s Pittsburgh chapter.

“My immediate reaction was he is not welcome here,” Friedman, who does not attend services at Tree of Life, told The Post in a Sunday phone interview. “I immediately wrote to the rest of our steering committee that he is not welcome, we have to make that clear.”

Four boldfaced lines stand out from the rest of the letter’s 338 words.

“President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism.”

“President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities.”

“President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees.”

“President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.”

Bend the Arc was founded in 2012 as an advocacy organization. Three years later, with the help of Alexander Soros, son of liberal philanthropist George Soros, the group launched the first Jewish political action committee focused on dealing solely with domestic issues, the Forward reported. According to its website, the group supports “everyone threatened by the Trump agenda,” and Alexander Soros is the chair of its board of directors. The Pittsburgh chapter was created shortly after the 2016 election, Friedman said.

On Sunday, Friedman read the letter, which is also signed by the group’s other 10 leaders, aloud in front of the White House during an afternoon vigil organized by Bend the Arc. To his surprise, he said the crowd began reading the boldfaced sentences with him.

“People are on board,” Friedman said, describing the experience as “powerful” and “energizing.” “People are hearing the words. People understand why we need do this.”

In recent days, Trump’s critics have alleged his incendiary rhetoric has contributed to the current climate of violence — a claim the president and members of the GOP vehemently oppose. Last week, more than 10 pipe bombs were discovered nationwide targeting people including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as well as employees at CNN. Cesar Sayoc, who is suspected of mailing the bombs, is a vocal Trump supporter who often ranted about people or organizations the president clashed with, The Post reported.

Trump has also come under fierce criticism for failing to condemn white supremacists, such as the ones present in Charlottesville last year. After violence broke out at the city’s Unite the Right rally in August 2017, leaving one woman dead and many others injured, the president said he thought there was “blame on both sides,” The Post’s David Nakamura reported.

Robert Bowers, the man arrested after Saturday’s deadly mass shooting, was active on a social media site known to be frequented by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others with extreme beliefs that may not be tolerated on more-mainstream platforms, The Post reported. A user with Bowers’s name espoused anti-Semitic views — comparing Jews to Satan, for example — and often expressed racism against African Americans, using the n-word in nearly 20 posts.

“We feel like there have been multiple communities under attack in the United States from the vitriol that the president has been spreading,” Friedman said. “It was the Jewish community’s turn. Blowback from his words came and cost people’s lives, and we said enough is enough.”

If the president decides to visit Pittsburgh without meeting the letter’s demands, Friedman said, he expects Trump will “only be met with derision.”

“We will let him know how unhappy we are with his presence, with his lack of leadership,” he said. “He will see all of Pittsburgh in the streets. It’s not just going to be the people that signed on to the letter. It’s going to be everybody."

Friedman added, “If he’s going to come to our city, he’s going to come on our terms.”

John Wagner contributed to this report. This post has been updated.

ccc · 2018-10-30

ccc · 2018-10-30

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is tearing through constitutional norms again with his suggestion that he can remove the right to citizenship for children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants.

Even if this idea goes nowhere and it is likely to go nowhere -- the Constitution's 14th Amendment 150 years ago conferred automatic citizenship to anyone born in the US, and the Supreme Court has upheld that birthright - the latest assertion reinforces a singular Trump message: The law is what he says it is.

Trump has declared people innocent or guilty, based on his personal views. He has derided US judges for decisions with which he disagrees. He has swatted away fundamental notions of due process by calling for the death penalty of people before they were even formally tried in court.

Now he appears to want to rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of his pen.

His targets have often been racial minorities and immigrants. Last May, the President suggested that immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without the usual hearings to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended.

He said in an Axios interview made public on Tuesday that he intends to sign an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship of children born in the US to non-citizens and undocumented immigrants.

That flatly conflicts with the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, that granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States."

The White House has not released language of the proposed order or outlined its legal justification for such an order.
Even if most of what Trump asserts regarding the law is wrong, it gets attention because it comes from him, the President of the United States, on his unparalleled perch.

In comments that have been picked up by major news organizations, Axios reported that Trump had obtained legal advice in the White House for ending birthright citizenship.

Such a move, if it were carried out in an executive order, would immediately be challenged in the courts. It is highly debatable whether even Congress could pass a law altering the principle that all children born in the United States are citizens. It would take a constitutional amendment to reverse the 14th Amendment's provision that birth in American automatically means US citizenship.

Yet as with many other instances, constitutional values and the normal judicial processes are being treated as speedbumps.
A year ago this week, he declared that a 29-year-old Uzbekistan native, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, charged with killing eight pedestrians and bikers in New York City, deserved the death penalty. Trump's assertion on Twitter immediately spurred some law professors and legal analysts to worry that the President's comments could prejudice the government's legal case.

Federal prosecutors announced last month that they would seek the death penalty, over arguments from the defendant's lawyers that Trump's tweets last year interfered with the ability of Justice Department officials to make an impartial decision on how to handle the case.

Earlier this month at a White House ceremony for new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump said Kavanaugh had been "proven innocent" of sexual assault allegations. Kavanaugh had not, in fact, been subject to any trial or fact-finding proceeding. The judicial veteran had categorically denied the claims from a woman who said the assault occurred when they were both teenagers in suburban Maryland, and he had been confirmed for the high court after a Senate hearing that did not involve any traditional trial procedures.

Trump has repeatedly denounced the men and women of the US judiciary when he disagrees with their decisions.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel, hearing a Trump University fraud case, based on the US-born Curiel's "Mexican heritage."

Then, newly elected Trump derided judges who ruled against his Muslim travel ban, calling one a "so-called judge."

Trump's first presidential pardon was for former Arizona county Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who a US district court judge had held in criminal contempt for disobeying an order to stop targeting Latinos for traffic stops and detention.

On Tuesday, critics across the political spectrum seized on Trump's comments about birthright as damaging to the national fabric and constitutional values.

"It is hard to imagine an executive order that would be more ill-timed or misguided given recent events across the country that have led to an increase in hate crimes and marginalization of minority communities based on race, national origin and religion," Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.

Approaching Trump's comments from the conservative viewpoint but sounding a similar chord, Linda Chavez, a former Reagan administration official and now director of Becoming American Initiative, said in a statement that Trump's effort to strip newborns of immigrants of their citizenship "exposes the depths of his contempt for our Constitution."

She also commented on its timing, arguing, "The President's motives are purely political -- hoping to stir up his anti-immigrant base in advance of next week's midterm election."