Words like cowardly have been used to describe the person who wrote the anonymous op-ed to the New York Times. But think about it. If Anonymous had revealed his/her identity, he/she would no longer be in the White House. Any person of sound mind is far more valuable to us on the inside of the White House than on the outside. Furthermore, the presence of Anonymous in the White House serves to further reveal how vindictive and unfocused Donald Trump is.

The nation is awakening to the danger. Even Barack Obama chose to enter the political fray because he sees that we have ranged far outside of normalcy in the White House. His patience may have been a virtue for a while, but it all too evident now that all hands must be on-board to address the issues inside the White House – ones that far too many Republicans on the outside are enabling by inaction.

Criticizing the New York Times is like faulting the person who sounds a fire alarm when the building is really on fire. The Times obviously did the necessary vetting of Anonymous and because of their willingness to break a rule that needed to be broken, we all have a better idea of what is going on behind closed doors at 1600.

It took over thirty years for the world to learn that former FBI agent Mark Felts was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. The case of possible suspects in the White House, or in the broader Trump administration, is much smaller. Anonymous will either be identified or will step forward before too long.

Once that happens, the focus will partially turn away from the transgressions of Trump to the character of Anonymous. It’s a sure bet that Trump will be joined by many other Republicans in lambasting this person. By taking his or her persona out of the equation, at least for a while, Anonymous has done us a great service. We must all seize the moment take the necessary steps to either minimize the damage that Trump does or remove him from office in a constitutional fashion.

The post Disheartening to hear criticism of NY Times and Anonymous appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The New York Times took the rare step, today, of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. The author, an unnamed, senior White House official, delivers an astonishingly honest account of how other senior officials are “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of Trump’s agenda and his worst inclinations.” Coming just one day after we began hearing excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump administration, the op-ed offers a timely confirmation of Woodward’s accounts.

Of course, it would be more satisfying–and morally much more courageous–if  the senior official had the temerity to come out of the closet. But, given his/her contention that the only way to save the presidency [and, perhaps, America] from the autocratic demagoguery of Donald Trump is to work from within, the anonymity is understandable.

It’s a sure bet that Trump is going to go ballistic over this, and launch his own internal “witch hunt” aimed at purging whoever wrote this. Undoubtedly, too, everyone who might be suspected of authoring this op-ed will deny that he/she wrote it–just as virtually everyone quoted by Woodward has already issued a denial [possibly a scenario they pre-arranged with Woodward as a condition of speaking to him on tape.]

Obviously, there’s going to be a big media kerfuffle over the author’s identity–trying to match the style of writing, the use of language, etc., to people closely associated with Trump. Eventually, we may learn his/her identity–everybody leaks everything in D.C.– and  he/she could be deemed a “hero” [whatever that means].  But the issues raised by this White House insider are more important than media speculation as to his/her identity. Kudos to the Times for recognizing the value of publishing this op-ed, and to the author for speaking out [ish]. That’s worth something.

Here is the full text of the op-ed:

The New York Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

Let the wild rumpus of “who said it” begin.

The post Top Trump official publishes devastating op-ed in New York Times [anonymously] appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In his latest interview with the New York Times [July 19, 2017], Donald Trump did what he always does: He rambled, flitted from topic to topic—sometimes in mid-sentence– garbled his words, talked about things for which he has limited knowledge, bragged, lied, got the facts wrong, strayed far afield from the topic at hand–and generally spewed strings of words that followed no logical sequence. Reading through the transcript of the interview, I tried to imagine what the New York Times reporters were thinking as they listened. My conclusion is that they had to tune in very closely to extrapolate what Trump was attempting to say.

So, when I watched MSNBC last night and saw New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt discussing the interview, I was surprised at how coherent he made Trump’s comments sound. Clearly, Schmidt was interpreting what Trump said, not quoting him directly. I fear that reporters have become so accustomed to mentally editing Trump’s word salads that they don’t even know they are doing it. To his credit, Schmidt does say, “It is difficult sometimes with the President because he speaks very quickly and says a lot of things and the conversation can meander.” But most of the of his report makes it sound as though Trump actually expressed coherent opinions.

It is always misguided to normalize Trump. His actual words are important—they reveal his way of “thinking,” and that is a scary thing to observe. Reporters who describe his “ideas” and “thoughts” as though they have been clearly expressed are doing Trump too much of a favor.

As with all the other transcripts that I have shared here, I highly recommend that you read the whole thing [although what the New York Times has released is an edited, excerpted version.]

If you don’t want to do that, here’s some of what Michael Schmidt said on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” on July 19, 2017, coupled with Trump’s actual words.

What Schmidt said:

He is clearly disappointed in Sessions…

What Trump actually said, and the tone in which he said it, says a lot more than he was “disappointed:”

Well, 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.

Q: He gave you no heads up at all, in any sense?

Trump: Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. Then I have—which frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself,. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.

…Yeah, what Jeff Sessions did was he recused himself right after, right after he became attorney general. And I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I would have –then I said, “who’s your deputy?” So he deputy he hardly kew, and that’s Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, who is from Baltimore. There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any. So, he’s from Baltimore.”

How Schmidt characterized Trump’s thoughts on special counsel Robert Mueller:

Trump is clearly upset about the fact that Mueller has been appointed and that he is looking at these different issues and that Mueller has the ability to take his investigation where he may.

…He wouldn’t commit to firing Mueller, but he did say there is a red line. He didn’t define what he meant as a violation. But he clearly sees Muller’s purview as looking into Russia…

What Trump actually said:

Q: If Muller was looking at your finances and your family finances unrelated to Russia—is that a red line?

Trump:

I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t—I don’t—I mean, it’s possible that there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don’t make money from Russia. In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don’t make—from one of the most highly respected law firms, accounting firms. I don’t have buildings in Russia They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t. I don’t do that…

…Look, this is about Russia. So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. Ad actually, when I do my filings, people say, “Man.” People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company any more. I think about this. ‘Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial, OK? I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son two nice people. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn’t Moscow, it was outside of Moscow.

Q: Would you fire Mueller if we went outside of certain parameters of what his charge is?

Trump: I can’t. I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Like all reporters, Schmidt was looking for the nugget, the money quote, a good lead for a story. So the New York Times led with the Sessions quotes. When you read, or listen to the transcript, there’s a lot more: Much unsolicited ado about Hillary, a lengthy riff on the wonderful Bastille Day celebration, something about Andrew McCabe’s wife getting money, Nixon, and more.

Here’s a section in which Trump tries to explain away the infamous meeting his son had at Trump Tower in June 2016. One reporter asked him what he thought about the email that triggered the meeting:

Well, I thought originally it might have something to do with the payment by Russia of the DNC, or the Democrats. Somewhere I heard that. Like, it was an illegal act done by the DNC or the Democrats. That’s what I had heard. Now, I don’t know where I heard it, but I had heard that it had to do something with illegal acts with respect to the DNC Now, you, know, when you look at the kind of stuff that came out, that, was, that was some pretty horrific things came out of that. But that’s what I had heard. But I don’t know what it means. All I know is this: When somebody calls up and they says, “We have infor—“ Look, what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff.”

Unfortunately, we are all becoming inured to Trump’s stream of semi-consciousness, fill-the-vacuum uninformed incoherence. But his inability to make sense when he speaks is a story in itself, and we must not let Trump-scandal fatigue allow this to go un-noted, or characterized as business as usual. We ignore it, normalize it, and accept it as “that’s just Trump”  at our own peril.

The post Latest NY Times Trump transcript: Why do reporters clean it up for TV? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

On July 2, 2017, the New York Times published a special section: an annotated version of the United States Constitution. The special section, says the Times in its introduction, comprises “a slightly abridged Constitution, printed one large, dramatic sheet, as well as an introductory essay, a timeline, and annotations to help elucidate the document’s meaning.” The annotations come from a variety of observers, Republican and Democratic representatives [Bernie Sanders, Dana Rohrabacher, Cory Booker and others], historians, journalists, law professors [Laurence Tribe], authors, and former government officials [Janet Napolitano and others].

I have now read it, in all its unwieldy, small-type glory.  I encourage everyone to take a look at this ambitious project. Unfortunately, it’s available in print only [at this writing], and you’re going to need to brush up on your map-folding skills to handle it. But it’s worth reading. I won’t do it full justice in this post, but I’m offering a selection of quotes that I found particularly intriguing and informative.

In his introductory essay, historian Gary Wills gives a detailed account of the Constitution’s origin story and attempts to put the words and intent of the Constitution’s writers into contemporary context. Or, as the NY Times editors write in their introduction, “How might these words, written in the time of George Washington, guide us in the age of Donald Trump?”

Child of The Enlightenment

Wills reminds us that “America was the first major country founded on the principles of the Enlightenment:’

The founders were at the forefront of science in their day. They would have been astonished had they foreseen a president and his government defying science in matters like evolution and global warming.

Wills also underscores the uniqueness of the secular nature of the US Constitution—the separation of church and state in the First Amendment:

This is the one entirely innovative element in the Constitution: Everything else—separated powers, federalism, the single executive, bicameralism, and independent judiciary—had been known in theory or practice, or both. Only this was truly new. Ours was the first nation started without the assistance of an official deity or cult.

Will adds, provocatively, the “the disestablishment concept was in fact so new that many people have questioned whether Madison really meant it.”

That is why so many logical consequences of separation between church and state have in practice been denied—resulting in “exceptions,” things like tax exemption for churches, state slogans like In God We Trust, legislative and military chaplaincies…”

The Dark Conclave

Wills’ description of the process by which the framers created the Constitution eerily foreshadows [and some would say justifies] much of the secrecy we are seeing in Congress and the executive branch today. He writes:

The framers of our new government were so conscious of their break with the past that they knew they had to sneak it past the very bodies that had authorized their meeting, the states that had sent them as delegates to Philadelphia…The only way to avoid [being recalled] was for…the participants to swear themselves to secrecy, and Washington himself would severely enforce the pledge…

When the convention was over, the records of the procedure were committed to Washington, with the understanding that he would hide them at Mount Vernon. Madison refused throughout his lifetime to release his own detailed diary of the sessions.

Wills also puts the founders’ wariness of direct elections into a modern context, particularly with respect to the selection of federal judges:

The original intent of the Constitution was to keep the judiciary independent of popular pressure…That is what was so bizarre about the opposition to hearings on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Republican senators like Mitch McConnell said that the nomination could not even be considered until “the people” had some say on the matter through the 2016 election…This was flatly contradictory to the Constitution’s clear intent, which was to isolate the Supreme Court from every kind of direct vote.

Guns and Slaves

Many 21^st Century arguments about the Constitution center on the Second Amendment, whose grammar [that second comma!] and wording are confusing, and which has been used to maximum effect by the National Rifle Association to sell guns and ammunition.

Wills points out an issue that is too often ignored: “…just how far the poison of slavery pervaded the Constitution… the Second Amendment was also intended to protect slaveholders, who used militias to keep a firm grip on their slaves.”

The Second Amendment …was not meant to let individuals prevent federal “tyranny”—how could it? By training our rifles or handguns on the Army, Navy and Air Force? It was meant to guarantee the legality of a “well-regulated [that is, state-controlled] Militia to handle the states’ internal problems, especially the problems of a large slave population.

What other observers say

What do other contemporary readers of the Constitution say about it in the context of today’s issues? The New York Times asked and got a wide variety of answers, some of which will confirm certain points of view, others of which will infuriate. Here are just a few:

Congressman Mike Lee [R-UT] on Article I, Section I:

“All legislative powers granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”

Lee says:

This clause grants lawmaking power to Congress so the people can keep an eye on their government. Sadly, in the 20^th century, members of Congress started to give away lawmaking authority to the executive branch, because they did not want to be held accountable to the people for unpopular laws. As a result, most of the regulations that govern our lives today were created by bureaucrats. Even though they work in the public interest, they are not accountable to the people…The bureaucrats who have de facto lawmaking power are the “swarms of others” the founders protested.”

Congressman Adam Schiff [D-CA] on Article I, Section 8:

“The Congress shall have the power to declare war.”

Schiff says:

More than 15 years ago, Congress authorized force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The 60-word authorization remains the basis for military action against terrorist organizations around the world…These include groups that didn’t exist in 2001, whose connection to the simple language of the original authorization is tenuous at best. It is incumbent on Congress to play the role that the framers intended…

Senator Robert Menendez [R-NJ] on the 14^th Amendment:

“Section I: All persons born or naturalized in the United states, and subject to the jurisdictions thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the United States…”

Menendez says:

…In recent years, the debate over immigration reform has given rise to attacks on the 14^th Amendment and on the millions of American-born children of undocumented parents across our country. Ending birthright citizenship would not fix our broken immigration system. Rather, it would give rise to a permanent underclass of undocumented individuals and their descendants…

Op-ed Columnist Ross Douthat on the 27^th Amendment:

“No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

Douthat says:

This might be the last amendment ever added. That sounds extreme, but consider: It has been 46 years since an amendment of any real controversy has been ratified, and the prospects for one gaining two-thirds support in both houses of Congress and then limping through the states grow dimmer with every year of polarization. Meanwhile, our political order is increasingly adapting itself to a world in which the text of the Constitution cannot plausibly be changed. Whenever the textual straitjacket seems to binding, the presidency simply claims new powers or the Supreme Court issues creative reinterpretations of earlier amendments, and Congress shrugs and lets the executive and judicial branches fight things out.

A lot has happened to the Constitution since the founders first put quill to parchment. The pendulum has swung from assault to defense and back again. Some say that the beauty of the United States Constitution is in its vagueness: You can interpret it to mean almost anything, especially because it was written in the differently nuanced language [and inconsistent spelling] of its day, and because it leaves the details up to lawmakers, judges, Presidents and Congresses. Is 21^st century America about to experience an unprecedented constitutional crisis? That remains to be seen. As Gary Wills sums it up:

…Madison said that the key component of all government was “virtue.” Unless people are willing to choose good arbitrators and submit to their disinterested judgments, there can be no enlightened progress. If the people really want a mean and selfish government, one that speaks only for a faction, then the voting process, no matter how refined, will let them have it. We have witnessed this abroad, when we encouraged democracy in other countries, only to see democratic tools used against democratic values. Perhaps we will one day witness it at home.

Or perhaps it’s already happening.

The post Highlights of NY Times’ annotated Constitution appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you don’t have the time or patience [or stomach] to read the entire, word-for-word transcript of Donald Trump’s interview with the New York Times, allow me to help. Here are some additional excerpts [I posted others yesterday], guaranteed to make you scratch your head in wonder at the man’s short-attention-span thinking and his narcissism. The excerpts I’m including have not received much media attention, because they’re not Tweet-ishly succinct. But they’re equally important, because they reveal a lot about this man’s perspective and his wandering focus.

Here’s an excerpt from Trump’s opening remarks.The New York Times gave him about 10 minutes of unstructured time in which to say whatever he wanted to before answering specific questions. In this section, he is talking about his intention to “bring the country together” after a “vicious” election.

TRUMP: What we do want to do is we want to bring the country together, because the country is very, very divided, and that’s one thing I did see, big league. It’s very, very divided, and I’m going to work very hard to bring the country together.

I mean, I’m somebody that really has gotten along with people over the years. It was interesting, my wife, I went to a big event about two years ago. Just after I started thinking about politics.

And we’re walking in and some people were cheering and some people were booing, and she said, you know, ‘People have never booed for you.’

I’ve never had a person boo me, and all of a sudden people are booing me. She said, that’s never happened before. And, it’s politics. You know, all of a sudden they think I’m going to be running for office, and I’m a Republican, let’s say. So it’s something that I had never experienced before and I said, ‘Those people are booing,’ and she said, ‘Yup.’ They’d never booed before. But now they boo. You know, it was a group and another group was going the opposite.

Yeah, it’s all about the booing.

Here’s another excerpt. In it, Trump responds to a question about climate change:

TRUMP: You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.

And you know, you mentioned a lot of the courses. I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true. Open mind.

So, Trump is an environmentalist because he built some “great, great, very successful golf courses,” and he had an uncle.

Finally, here is Trump’s take on his strategy late in the campaign:

TRUMP: …the numbers are coming out far beyond what anybody’s wildest expectation was. I don’t know if it was us, I mean, we were seeing the kind of crowds and kind of, everything, the kind of enthusiasm we were getting from the people.

As you probably know, I did many, many speeches that last four-week period. I was just telling Arthur that I went around and did speeches in the pretty much 11 different places, that were, the massive crowds we were getting. If we had a stadium that held — and most of you, many of you were there — that held 20,000 people, we’d have 15,000 people outside that couldn’t get in.

So we came up with a good system — we put up the big screens outside with a very good loudspeaker system and very few people left. I would do, during the last month, two or three a day. That’s a lot. Because that’s not easy when you have big crowds. Those speeches, that’s not an easy way of life, doing three a day. Then I said the last two days, I want to do six and seven. And I’m not sure anybody has ever done that. But we did six and we did seven and the last one ended at 1 o’clock in the morning in Michigan.

And we had 31,000 people, 17,000 or 18,000 inside and the rest outside. This massive place in Grand Rapids, I guess. And it was an incredible thing. And I left saying: ‘How do we lose Michigan? I don’t think we can lose Michigan.’

And the reason I did that, it was set up only a little while before — because we heard that day that Hillary was hearing that they’re going to lose Michigan, which hasn’t been lost in 38 years. Or something. But 38 years. And they didn’t want to lose Michigan. So they went out along with President Obama and Michelle, Bill and Hillary, they went to Michigan late that, sort of late afternoon and I said, ‘Let’s go to Michigan.’

It wasn’t on the schedule. So I finished up in New Hampshire and at 10 o’clock I went to Michigan. We got there at 12 o’clock. We started speaking around 12:45, actually, and we had 31,000 people and I said, really, I mean, there are things happening. But we saw it everywhere.

…And I thought we were going to win it. And we won it, we won it, you know, relatively easily, we won it by a number of points. Florida we won by 180,000 — was that the number, 180?

For Trump, it’s not about a message or a plan: It’s all about the crowds, the adulation, and the sound system..This is what he chooses to talk about with the New York Times, in hopes of impressing them.

I wonder if, after seeing this transcript, Trump will ever again agree to a completely on-the-record interview. I hope he does, but I have my doubts. On the other hand, he is so delusional about himself that he probably thinks this interview went extremely well and that he won over [or snowed] the New York Times with his bullshit.

Frightening.

The post More excerpts from Trump’s NYT interview: Incoherence & narcissism appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I urge everyone to take the time to read the entire transcript of Donald Trump’s Nov. 23, 2016 on-the-record interview with the New York Times. It will make you cringe, grimace and maybe even cry. Some of it has already been quoted many times: We’ve seen excerpts about his not wanting to “hurt” the Clintons, about not seeing The Wall as a top priority, and especially that cringe-inducing, Nixonian assertion that “the law is on my side, the President cannot have a conflict of interest.” Understandably, the mainstream media have focused on statements pertaining to policy [a term that, when applied to Trump, is very generous].

But there is a lot more in the transcript that is not getting the attention it deserves. It’s not as quote-worthy—because it’s not succinct or pithy, or headline-ready. But it’s important to read it, because the parts of the interview that are not being highlighted offer significant insight into Trump’s thinking [again, using that term loosely] and his way of communicating.  And it’s not pretty.

My tenth-grade English Composition teacher always said that “writing is thinking.” A corollary to that truism is that speaking is also reflective of one’s thought process. If that’s the case with Trump, we are in serious trouble.

The New York Times transcript offers a look inside Trump’s brain, via his answers to the questions posed by reporters and editors. This is Trump completely unscripted: not reading from a teleprompter; not campaigning at a rally; not being coached by his handlers [although Kelly Anne Conway and Reince Preibus were sitting next to him]; not Tweeting at 5 am; not calling in to Hannity or Scarborough. This is Trump at the New York Times—a newspaper that he has railed against, but also a media power that he wants to convert to his side. This is Trump attempting to say the things that he thinks a President should be saying to make the New York Times love him.

When you read it, you see that he is doing what he always does: spitballing, winging it, rambling to fill the silence, changing the subject when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, bragging, exaggerating, talking about all of the people who love him, making shit up on the fly, and—above all—trying to say something that will impress the New York Times. And rambling—lots of incoherent, inarticulate rambling. Imagine this loose-lipped man, who has clearly not thought through any of the issues–except the ones that affect his bottom line–in private talks with world leaders who actually know stuff.

Here’s an example that we probably won’t see quoted on mainstream media, or anywhere else, for that matter. This statement came in response to a question about Trump’s recent meeting with Nigel Farage. The Times reporter wanted to know if Trump had sought help in preventing the development of a wind farm near his golf course in Scotland: [This is the formatting as published by the New York Times.]

TRUMP: Oh, I see. I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean, the wind is a very deceiving thing. First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere, whether it’s in our country or not, it goes into the atmosphere. The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies. In other words, we’re subsidizing wind mills all over this country. I mean, for the most part they don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds. You go to a windmill, you know in California they have the, what is it? The golden eagle? And they’re like, if you shoot a golden eagle, they go to jail for five years and yet they kill them by, they actually have to get permits that they’re only allowed to kill 30 or something in one year. The windmills are devastating to the bird population, O.K. With that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. So, if I talk negatively. I’ve been saying the same thing for years about you know, the wind industry. I wouldn’t want to subsidize it. Some environmentalists agree with me very much because of all of the things I just said, including the birds, and some don’t. But it’s hard to explain. I don’t care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country.

If you were standing on 5^th Avenue in New York, and some guy came up to you and said what Trump said about windmills and birds, you’d probably walk away as quickly as possible. And if you were a mental-health professional, and a guy came into your office rambling like that, might you possibly put a note in his chart about incoherent thinking, and maybe wonder if he needed medication or hospitalization?

Here’s another excerpt.This one is in response to a question about mixing his personal business with his role as President, and whether business partners in other countries will try to curry favor with Trump. Part of this has already made the news cycle–the part about “the law is on my side.” But here’s the rest of it. [Buckle up.]

TRUMP: O.K. First of all, on countries. I think that countries will not do that to us. I don’t think if they’re run by a person that understands leadership and negotiation they’re in no position to do that to us, no matter what I do. They’re in no position to do that to us, and that won’t happen, but I’m going to take a look at it. A very serious look. I want to also see how much this is costing, you know, what’s the cost to it, and I’ll be talking to you folks in the not-too-distant future about it, having to do with what just took place.

As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.

There’s more. Much more. To me, a lot of it sounds like Trump is desperately babbling in an effort to find something—anything—that will sound presidential, will make him sound reasonable to the New York Times, and give them an answer that they want to hear.

Read it for yourself. This is the unfocused, inarticulate, inchoate thinking of the person who is about to be our 45^th President. Shockingly, after the interview, after hearing Trump’s tsunami of bullshit, the Times editorial board praised Trump for being “flexible” on certain issues.

I’m not a person who prays, but if you are, please do what you can.

[UPDATE: Read additional excerpts here, with my commentary.]

[Also, see Trump’s edited Person-of-the-Year interview with Time magazine.]

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Slogans are sort of micro tweets, intended to sell brand by as much repetition as possible.

“This is CNN” is innocuous enough, even as comfortingly intoned by James Earl Jones. But CNN has also long espoused its “Most Trusted Name in News” slogan, which is straying a bit. This is the magic of marketing. You repeat the “Most Trusted Name in News” every few minutes and what do you know, the “Most Trusted Name in News” begins to sound pretty reliable.

Thanks, Ted.

Of course, the pendulum swings both ways. Fox News has “Fair and Balanced.” Trust and fairness are both highly personal and individualized concepts. They are, in fact, uncountable concepts in English. You cannot put a number on them. And therein lies the rub of their success. The concepts are impossible to verify. You cannot count how many people trust or believe a particular story fair at any moment in time. There is no way to do this.

You can do a sampling. You can phrase a question in such a way to get a particular response. And who is to differ with your results? In other words, who’s to differ with behemoths? Nobody, actually. You or I as individuals don’t have the resources on any given date to conduct a contrary poll to CNN or Fox News with questions phrased to elicit different answers.

“Fair and Balanced?”

Thanks, Rupert.

And then there is the New York Times.

For me, the myth of the New York Times has always been partially based on the paper’s genius slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” I have forever loved the apostrophe in That’s. For me, this is where the Old World leaves off, and the New World begins. A disregard for the past, businessmen in control, no baloney, and factual truth acknowledged. Adolph Simon Ochs adopted the slogan in 1896, a much simpler time. I imagine Adolph coming up with “All the News That’s Fit to Print” sitting at the dinner table with his wife Effie, and his daughter Iphigene. Here’s what we’ll do. It’s settled. We’ll brand the paper with “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Iphigene laughs – she may have coined the phrase. Decision made. A scene out of a George Cukor movie.

It turns out, though, that the present-day New York Times is not immune to the marketplace. Adding more content to its constant on-line redefinition, the paper is in the process of seeking out a viable position as an essential provider of minute-by-minute video news. When it recently redesigned its Magazine, the New York Times said this: “We admit it: We’re late to this party.”

Yeah, and how.

Do you have an iPhone? You are a news medium.

What do you know? “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is no longer the guideline. First it was “All the News That’s Fit to Click.” Ouch! So last century, distant from the culture supposedly being mirrored. We don’t click news. We breathe it when we need it. But they got that! The nytimes.com new slogan as of just this past month is “Countries have borders, Stories don’t.”

Really. What a limp, CNN-inspired copy!

What happened to news? Now all we are interested in are stories, personal interpretations of what happened. We no longer care for the facts?

What a turnaround.

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