The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
Discussion Thread: Self-Care
What are you doing to do to take care of yourself over the weekend, or today, or in the near future, as soon as you can?
If you are someone who has a hard time engaging in self-care, or figuring out easy, fast, and/or inexpensive ways to treat yourself, and you would like to solicit suggestions, please feel welcome. And, as always, no one should offer advice unless it is solicited.
As for me, I am going to have dinner with a dear friend who's nearby for a conference this weekend, and we are going to give each other so many squeezy fat lady hugs!
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cucumbers.
Recommended Reading:
Marie: [Content Note: Discussion of body shaming] I'm a Fat Girl in a Tutu Who Loves to Take Up Space
Sameer: #ResistanceInPhilly Rocks Republican Congressional Retreat
Angry Asian Man: 100+ AAPI Orgs Sign on to Joint Statement Opposing Trump
Elizabeth: [CN: White supremacy] 'We Need to Be Rethinking Our Response to This': An Interview with dream hampton
Jarry: [CN: White supremacy] Roxane Gay Pulls Book from Simon & Schuster in Response to Milo Yiannopoulos Controversy
Monica: Been Nominated for 2017 Houston Pride Parade Grand Marshal!
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 8
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things I've read today:
Richard Stengel at The Atlantic: The End of the American Century. The other night, Iain put the same idea even more starkly: "Trump is the period at the end of the American sentence."
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Mikhail Gorbachev at Time: It All Looks as if the World Is Preparing for War. Damn.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jeff Zeleny and James Griffiths at CNN: Donald Trump to Speak with Vladimir Putin on Saturday. Great. Everything is fine. So, when Trump and Putin have their chit-chat, is Trump going to use a secure line or his tweet machine? Because: Trump's Still Using His Old Android Phone. That's Very, Very Risky.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Erin Kelly at USA Today: Pence Tells Congress to 'Buckle Up' and Get Ready to Enact Major Change. "Vice President Pence told Republican members of Congress on Thursday to 'buckle up' and get ready to work with the new Trump administration on everything from repealing Obamacare to confirming a 'strict constructionist' to fill the Supreme Court. 'My friends, this is our moment,' he told lawmakers at a GOP congressional retreat in downtown Philadelphia." I may have mentioned once or twice or three million times that the role Pence would play in this administration is leading this very charge.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] And speaking of Mike Pence... Dan Merica at CNN: Pence to Address March for Life in Person. "Vice President Mike Pence will address Friday's March for Life in person, a first for a sitting vice president in the event's 43-year history." I don't guess I need to remind you about Pence's aggressively horrendous anti-choice record in Indiana, which has left the state one of the most dangerous in which to be pregnant in the entire country.
Michael R. Gordon, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmitt at the New York Times: Trump Will Call for a Pentagon Plan to Hit ISIS Harder, Officials Say. "The White House is drafting a presidential directive that calls on Defense Secretary James N. Mattis to devise plans to more aggressively strike the Islamic State, which could include American artillery on the ground in Syria and Army attack helicopters to support an assault on the group’s capital, Raqqa, officials said. President Trump, who is to make his first visit to the Pentagon as commander in chief on Friday, will demand that the new options be presented to him within 30 days, the officials said. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly said that he had a secret plan to defeat the Islamic State, but he also said that he would give his commanders a month to come up with new options." My position on this remains the same.
Andrew Revkin at ProPublica: Trump's Team at EPA Vetting 'Controversial' Public Meetings and Presentations. "On Tuesday, the new administration's efforts to take hold of the EPA continued, this time with a memo from EPA headquarters requiring all regional offices to submit a list of 'all external meetings or presentations by employees planned through February 17.' The memo demanded the offices provide a short description of each event and a note explaining 'whether it is controversial and why.'" WTF.
Esme Cribb at TPM: Report: Trump Admin Pulls Obamacare Ads in Last Days of 2017 Open Enrollment. "President Donald Trump's administration has abruptly halted ads and outreach for Obamacare set to run during the final days of the 2017 open enrollment season, according to a report published Thursday by Politico. Even ads that President Barack Obama's administration already placed and paid for have been pulled, Politico reported, citing sources at the Department of Health and Human Services and on Capitol Hill. The White House has also reportedly halted media outreach promoting enrollment, including emails sent to visitors to HealthCare.gov. ...The final days of the open enrollment period are 'seen as critical,' according to the report. This is due to a last-minute surge in sign-ups by individuals who procrastinate on enrollment, particularly younger and healthier customers." In plain English: Trump is trying to sabotage Obamacare, in order to call it a failure and justify replacing it.
[CN: White supremacy; violence] Tina Vasquez at Rewire: Trump's New Immigration Official Used to Lead Hate Group. "Julie Kirchner, former executive director of the anti-immigrant hate group the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has reportedly been named chief of staff of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency that oversees Border Patrol. FAIR's leaders have ties to eugenics and white supremacist organizations, and its founder is credited with creating the modern anti-immigrant movement." CBP claims hers is merely "a temporary political appointment." Oh.
[CN: Transphobia] Luis Damian Veron at Towleroad: South Dakota to Consider Anti-Trans Locker Room Bill. "The latest state-level attempt to micromanage gender identity among trans youths comes in South Dakota, where two Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that specifically designates locker room use by students in accordance with their sex [assigned] at birth." Goddammit. In hopeful news: "Governor Daugaard has already signaled his intention to veto any bill that is 'substantially the same' as last year's."
Karen Tumulty and Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post: Trump Pressured Park Service to Find Proof for His Claims About Inauguration Crowd. Of course he did. Because he is a brittle, insecure despot with zero compunction about abusing his power to satiate his voracious need for adoration.
Speaking of which... Lucy Pasha-Robinson at The Independent: Government Library Bookshelves 'Filled with Donald Trump Books'. "A bookcase in the former State Department library in Washington D.C. has been filled with Donald Trump's books, it has been claimed. According to an unverified photograph that emerged on Thursday, shelves of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building's library are now stocked with reading material authored by the US president."
Trump's presidential portrait is terrific, obviously.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Of Course
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
By a margin of 42 to 39, Trump voters think it’s OK for him to have a private email server, poll shows. https://t.co/a29piOuuwV pic.twitter.com/pIANGYloI0
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) January 26, 2017
Do they even know WHY they were shouting "Lock Her Up!" or was just being an uppity woman enough reason? https://t.co/J4yw43XShh
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 27, 2017
That question is, of course, rhetorical. Being an uppity woman was always enough reason. It was enough reason for Trump supporters chanting for her imprisonment—and occasionally calling for her death—and it was enough reason for the corporate media, who weren't concerned about the Bush administration's massive email scandal, and don't seem concerned about [CN: video may autoplay] the Trump administration using RNC emails on the same system used by the Bush administration "to evade transparency rules after claiming to have 'lost' 22 million emails."
I couldn't make that up.
The corporate media reported on Hillary Clinton's emails for 600 days, but could not muster similar concern for either Republican presidency bookending the Democratic administration in which she served. Huh.
I Write Letters
Dear People Demanding to Know Why Hillary Clinton Isn't Doing Whatever It Is You Think She Needs to Be Doing in This Moment:
Hillary Clinton doesn't owe you a goddamned thing.
Hillary Clinton ran for president. She ran despite a hideous game of cajoling her to run, only to shame her for running. She ran despite the fact that the media has treated her like garbage for decades; despite knowing they would treat her like garbage again—which they did. She ran despite knowing, as keenly as any other woman in the country and more than most, the hellscape of vicious misogyny that would be unleashed against her. She ran despite the fact that she knew, should she win, she would face Republican obstructionism and vitriol so vast and relentless that it would take a tenacious beast to govern. She ran knowing she would have to be that tenacious beast, and could be.
She ran for president on the most progressive Democratic platform ever, and her campaign was remarkably devoid of the typical unforced errors in most presidential campaigns (including her previous one). She showed herself to be a candidate capable of learning and willing to learn—when she changed positions, it was because she came to the more progressive one.
Which is not to suggest that she was a perfect candidate, but she was a damn good one. Yet her insufficient perfection was somehow considered a fatal flaw by people who now demand she dance at their command.
She wanted to lead this nation—and, more importantly, she wanted to govern it. And she had the knowledge and capability to do it, and do it well.
She put out an enormous number of policy papers and factsheets, so we could see exactly what she wanted to do and how she would do it. She gave detailed policy addresses, and she answered voters' questions with both compassion and seriousness and details.
She conveyed, in every conceivable way, that she had the experience to be our president, and an abundance of talent, and she was offering both to us.
And we passed.
More of us voted for her, of course, but there is a reason she is not our president. And it's not just because of Russian interference and James Comey being a colossal wanker. It's also because enough votes for Jill Stein threw key states to Donald Trump, and because millions and millions of people voted for Trump despite his reprehensible platform.
I am hardly the first person to observe that I would much rather be spending my days encouraging Hillary Clinton to be more progressive than documenting the fall of the republic under the presidency of Donald Trump.
But here we are.
And now there are people—many of whom are self-identified Bernie Sanders supporters who voted for Stein in those aforementioned key states, or who voted for Trump, or who didn't vote at all—who are demanding to know why Hillary Clinton isn't "doing something" to stop Donald Trump and his authoritarian onslaught.
She did do something, you ungrateful wrecks. She campaigned for 18 months, the last of them against Trump himself, day after exhausting day, keeping up a ruthless schedule that would drive most people half her age to collapse after three weeks, no less a year and a half. She gave up time with her family, her grandchildren; gave up anything resembling free time; gave up her privacy. She made countless sacrifices on behalf of this country in order to prevent this exact outcome.
You took a hard pass, and now you have the unmitigated temerity to want more from her? Fuck you.
I note with all the mirthless laughter in the universe that one of the incessant criticisms of Hillary Clinton was that she was entitled.
She gave it everything she had already. You don't get to ask for even more.
And what, pray tell, do you expect her to do, anyway? Crash the confirmation hearings? She's not a sitting Senator anymore. That's not the way it works. Show up at a protest, dragging the Secret Service with her, constantly on the lookout for people who sent her death threats; chanted that she should be locked up or killed? That's not the way it works, either.
Even if you could name some meaningful action that you'd like her to be taking in this moment, this darkest of moments in our nation's history, she doesn't owe it to you.
It hurts my heart when I think about how not only did we reject her in favor of the shitlord who currently occupies the Oval Office, but we sought to humiliate her, over and over, for even trying to defeat him.
And now, to add breathtaking insult to that grievous injury, people are mad at her for not showing up?! She tried to show up. And a bunch of progressive purists told her to GTFO and spit in her face for good measure.
Hillary Clinton doesn't owe you shit.
She warned you that it was a bad idea to set your house on fire, and now you're mad at her for not letting you crash on her couch? How dare you.
Seriously. How dare you.
It isn't Hillary Clinton's fault that you didn't take seriously what was really at stake. And I wouldn't blame her for never showing up again for a country that disregarded her warnings and rejected her so callously.
But the thing is: She probably will show up. Again. She's probably hatching some sort of plan as we speak, because that's just the kind of indomitable human being she is—a patriot of unfathomable measure.
And the fact that we almost certainly haven't heard the last of Hillary Clinton is not only testament to her extraordinary fortitude and her profound loyalty to this nation, but is the primary fucking reason that she deserved our votes.
She deserved them way more than we deserve her.
So if Hillary Clinton wants to spend the rest of her days walking in the woods and playing with her grandchildren and eating delicious things and never, ever, putting herself in front of a camera and subjecting herself to abominably unjust scrutiny no person should ever have to face, more power to her.
I hope she does exactly what she wants to do, whatever that may be.
Because she has already given me an enormous amount of her time, her energy, her very self. She doesn't owe me another goddamned thing.
And she doesn't owe you anything more, either.
Sincerely,
Liss
P.S. Stop asking women to be your clean-up crew.
P.P.S. Maude save us all.
[Note: In case it's not abundantly clear from the address line on this letter, it is directed only at people who are demanding something from Hillary Clinton. It is not directed broadly at progressives who didn't vote for her, for reasons such as not feeling as though her platform to address police violence against Black people was sufficiently robust. As I have repeatedly made clear: My vote is mine, and your vote is yours. Please understand, as you head to comments, that the issue is not having voted, or not voted, for Hillary Clinton, but people who are demanding she show up for them now, in the exact way they want, irrespective of for whom they cast a vote.]
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker billerina: What are your favorite and most hated words, for whatever reason?
We've done this question before (and I always love it!), and my answer is always the same.
Favorite: Tintinnabulation!
Most hated: Moist.
Shaker Gourmet
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
Quote of the Day
"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile. I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."—Chief White House strategist and former CEO of Breitbart Media Steve Bannon, during a call with reporters last night.
Chilling.
Does anyone in the press regret the disgusting both-sideserism that governed coverage of this election yet?
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
Asking for 65,844,609 friends.
Disappointing
Dem Sen staffer told a friend they can't obstruct everything because "obstructing everything" what they fought for 8 years. #vichydemocrats
— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) January 25, 2017
It ought to be fairly simple to articulate that the GOP was obstructing for partisanship, while they must obstruct to preserve the nation. https://t.co/E9RV95e5dH
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
As I said on Twitter yesterday (ICYMI): I was pleased (and said so, often) with how hard Senate Democrats were going at Trump's nominees during confirmation hearings. But it's pointless if they vote for them.
How do you expose that every one of his nominees is an unqualified and dangerous nightmare, then turn around and vote affirmatively for them?
They were going to get confirmed no matter what, so why on Maude's green earth would Democrats give them bipartisan cover? A horrendous mistake.
Senator Elizabeth Warren's absurd explanation for why she voted for Ben Carson, for example. None of it explains why she voted affirmatively to normalize dangerously unqualified nominees. Promises aren't records of competence. It's an incomprehensible decision, after she got him to admit he won't stop the Trump Organization from HUD profiteering. How does she vote yes after that?!
I am pretty good with sussing out political long games that don't immediately appear to make sense, but there is no long game here that I can see. All she had to do was vote no.
And if that resulted in Trump offering up someone worse (as if there could be), then all she had to do was keep voting no.
This is not a normal administration. The Democrats need to fight against it with everything they've got. Hugely disappointing capitulation.
Like, I don't expect miracles. I am keenly aware of and appreciate what it is possible and not possible to do as the minority party. More than most people, I'd wager, I appreciate the value of a strongly worded statement, when the only other realistic option is silence.
But "vote no on nominee whose only qualification is a willingness to destroy the department they're tasked with running" is a low bar. A bar so low, in fact, that I am quite honestly incredulous that Senate Democrats have failed to clear it so completely. Deeply regrettable. Literally.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 7
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things I've read today:
Josh Rogin at the Washington Post: The State Department's Entire Senior Management Team Just Resigned. Holy shit. "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don't want to stick around for the Trump era." On the one hand, this is an incredible display of resistance. On the other, who the hell are they going to get to fill those positions? As I have said before: "Even if Trump WANTED a cabinet of qualified career bureaucrats, they don't want the jobs." And that is very scary. Because when qualified and competent people don't want anything to do with an administration, their jobs get filled by people who are unqualified and incompetent. Which leaves us all in grave danger.
And that's not all. At the AP, Elliot Spagat and Alicia A. Caldwell report: Border Patrol Chief Out Day After Trump Border Fence Decree. "The chief of the Border Patrol has left the agency that's in charge of securing America's borders with Mexico and Canada. According to a U.S. official and a former official, Border Patrol agents have been told that Mark Morgan is no longer on the job. It's not immediately clear whether Morgan resigned or was asked to leave." On Twitter, Wesley Lowery notes: "For context: Law enforcement source describes Mark Morgan as a careerist, not political. Extremely well respected."
Josh Marshall at TPM: Wow, It Gets Bigger.
Last night I noted that a top Russian spy who is the number two person in the FSB department which allegedly oversaw the US election hacking operation had been arrested and charged with treason. Was he a sacrificial lamb and olive branch to Trump? A way for Putin to claim that his spy services had perhaps gone rogue? Or was he suspected of being a source to US intelligence? People who fall from grace in Putin's Russia are often dealt with with trumped up criminal prosecutions. But treason is a special charge.I'm (regrettably) fairly confident that the answer to that question is "yes."
Well, now we have reports that Sergei Mikhailov is suspected of being a US asset at the heart of Russian intelligence.
...[T]his immediately poses the question: if Mikhailov was a US asset, how was he compromised? Did the information put out by US intelligence somehow lead to his exposure? Without putting too fine a point on it, a number of close advisors to President Trump are being scrutinized for ties to Russia. Some of them participated in the intelligence briefings the President receives. Do we have a very big problem?
Charles M. Blow at the New York Times: A Lie by Any Other Name. "Donald Trump is a proven liar. He lies often and effortlessly. He lies about the profound and the trivial. He lies to avoid guilt and invite glory. He lies when his pride is injured and when his pomposity is challenged. Indeed, one of the greatest threats Trump poses is that he corrupts and corrodes the absoluteness of truth, facts, and science." Do read the whole thing.
Matt Zapotosky at the Washington Post: Trump Wants to Empower Local Police to Enforce Immigration Law, Raising Fears of Racial Profiling. "President Trump on Wednesday directed his homeland security secretary to deputize local law enforcement officials to enforce immigration laws, a move that civil rights advocates fear could embolden police to racially profile those they encounter. The directive came as part of a sweeping executive order that cracks down on people in the country without documentation and the cities that don't readily hand them over for deportation." This is, literally, one step away from Ihre papiere, bitte.
Sophia Tesfaye at Salon: 'I'm Begging FEMA for Boots on the Ground': Donald Trump Leaves GOP Leaders Begging for Aid After Deadly Storms in the South. "NBC News reported that Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant sent a letter to Trump pleading for help after four people were killed in his state and more than 1,000 homes were damaged in one county alone. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal expanded a state of emergency in his state—where 15 people have been confirmed dead—from seven counties to 16 on Monday afternoon and extended the order through Jan. 30. Chris Cohilas, Georgia's Dougherty County commission chairman, said he was 'begging FEMA for boots on the ground' and 'asking President Trump to cut through the red tape and get people on the damned ground here.'"
Glenn Thrush at the New York Times: Trump's Voter Fraud Example? A Troubled Tale With Bernhard Langer. "The witnesses described the story this way: Mr. Langer, a 59-year-old native of Bavaria, Germany—a winner of the Masters twice and of more than 100 events on major professional golf tours around the world—was standing in line at a polling place near his home in Florida on Election Day, the president explained, when an official informed Mr. Langer he would not be able to vote. Ahead of and behind Mr. Langer were voters who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote, Mr. Trump said, according to the staff members—but they were nonetheless permitted to cast provisional ballots. The president threw out the names of Latin American countries that the voters might have come from." Emphasis mine.
Trump still taking his cues from Fox News. All the guy does is watch TV and either repeat what he hears, or rails against it.
Doomsday Clock Closer to Midnight in Wake of Donald Trump Election. Terrific.
Media Matters: Alex Jones Says Infowars Has Been Invited to Trump's White House Press Briefings. Which the White House denies. Which I don't believe, because I have no reason to trust them. Good lord.
Jeremy W. Peters at the New York Times: Pence Will Speak at Anti-Abortion Rally. Of course he will. Rage seethe boil.
Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine: Paul Ryan: U.S. Will 'Front Money' for Border Wall, Devise Plan to Make Mexico Pay Later. "He didn't elaborate, but according to CNN, during the Republican lawmakers' retreat in Philadelphia this week, Ryan said they could push through a special spending bill dedicated to the wall in the next few months."
David Agren and Ben Jacobs at the Guardian: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto Cancels U.S. Visit over Trump's Order to Build Border Wall. We are going to be the rump end of the free world in short order.
Trump's approval rating is now at 36%. Buyer's remorse. From buyers who should have paid some bloody attention.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
We Knew This Was Coming from Day One—Because Trump Told Us Himself
On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced that he was running for president.
He descended on an escalator at Trump Tower, and he gave an announcement address in which he infamously suggested that undocumented immigrants are rapists.
Although that part of his speech is generally well-remembered, the rest has largely been forgotten. But that speech has haunted me ever since—because every single thing by which decent people are now horrified was there then. In his first speech as a presidential candidate.
Every authoritarian tendency; white supremacy; nativism; Islamophobia; the praise for Putin; the reflexive and shameless lying; the braggadocio and fixation on how adored he is; the assertions that he alone can rescue America from its dire state; the references to "experts" who privately fill him in on the things the media conspires to conceal; the constant references to his business interests.
All of it was there from Day One.
Below, I revisit Donald Trump's announcement speech. It is long and rambling, as his speeches inevitably are, and it may seem disjointed from excerpt to excerpt, although I did not rearrange or in any way edit the transcript.
My observations are in bold between excerpts.
Donald Trump was always Donald Trump. The hard truth is that anyone who could not imagine what he is doing and saying now simply wasn't paying attention—because it has always been there, for anyone who made it their business to really see it.
My hope for this exercise is twofold: 1. To underscore the abject failure to seriously scrutinize the content of the message while treating the messenger like a joke; 2. To urge that we recognize the gravity of where we are, to not continue to wonder if he is an authoritarian, and to not continue to make the mistake of underestimating the danger posed by Donald Trump.
Hello
I see you. The things you are feeling right now are valid, no matter how much Donald Trump, his administration of vandals, and large swaths of the corporate media try to gaslight you.
Whether you feel angry, scared, confused, hopeless, resolved to fight, or any combination thereof, those feelings are legitimate.
And you are not alone.
Donald Trump Is Utterly Terrifying
[Content Note: White supremacy; torture; war.]
I realize that, at this point, saying Donald Trump is utterly terrifying is about as banal as observation as saying water is wet—but that in itself is chilling, that observing the United States President is a terrifying figure has already become routine, on Day 7 of his presidency.
It is a statement of fact, and there's nowhere to go from there, when things get even more alarming.
Last night, Trump did an hour-long interview with ABC's David Muir, and every second of it underscored just how terrifying Trump is. Here, for example, is Trump straight-up lying about the rigorous refugee vetting process that is already in place and talking about how "the world is a mess," to justify a Muslim ban.
Pres. Trump on potential executive order implementing increased vetting for certain immigrants: "I don’t want terror in this country." pic.twitter.com/givtoBP0Eh
— ABC News (@ABC) January 26, 2017
TRUMP: We are excluding certain countries. But for other countries we're gonna have extreme vetting. It's going to be very hard to come in. Right now it's very easy to come in. It's gonna be very, very hard. I don't want terror in this country. You look at what happened in San Bernardino. You look at what happened all over. You look at what happened in the World Trade Center. Okay, I mean, take that as an example. People don't even bring that up.It's tough to explain, for those who can only read the transcript, what the tenor of Trump's response was. It was seething—and it was also somehow gleeful. Beneath the grave veneer, he is palpably excited as he spins his grim tale of how fucked up everything is. Because he's talking about a great opportunity. An opportunity to enact his hateful, authoritarian agenda.
MUIR: Are you at all concerned—are you at all concerned it's going to cause more anger among Muslims around the world?
TRUMP: Anger? There's plenty of anger right now. How can you have more?
MUIR: You don't think it'll exacerbate the problem?
TRUMP: Look, David, David, I mean, I know you're a sophisticated guy. The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What? You think this is gonna cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place. All of this has happened. We went into Iraq. We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. The world is a total mess. The world is a mess, David.
I live-blogged the interview, which you can find on my timeline if you're interested, but here are some highlights.
Advisors during prep: So, in this interview, make sure you show that you have a big heart.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
Trump during interview: I have a very big heart.
Trump complains about press "demeaning me unfairly." CRITICISM COMES WITH THE JOB, BUB. Which he should know, given his mouthshits at Obama.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
Trump is "surprised" that Mattis isn't a fan of torture but he's "spoken to others" who are "big believers" in torture & tell him it works.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
Trump justifying Muslim ban by saying "They're ISIS. They're coming under false pretenses." HE'S TALKING ABOUT REFUGEES ESCAPING ISIS.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
"I don't want to do a lot of talking on the military before it starts." More hints, as on campaign trail, he will launch surprise attacks.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
Paying attention to the subtext of stuff like this is why I've always seen what's coming. https://t.co/Z23nXnVJ2T
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 26, 2017
These are features of every authoritarian who has used disinformation and delusions of his own grandeur to do untold harm. We must reckon with the fact that, as Eastsidekate said: "It's no longer a matter of 'it can happen here.' It IS HAPPENING here." And we must resist.
