Yesterday, Donald Trump finished off a two-week stretch of diminishing America's standing in the world by announcing he was pulling out of the historic Paris climate agreement. In Trumpian terms, this means we're all covfefeed now.
Trump's announcement, as usual, stated many things which are simply not true. America, Trump essentially said, was getting covfefeed over by the entire globe, who together with Barack Obama came up with an insidious plan to crush the American economy for no reason whatsoever. This was the big lie at the center of all the other lies Trump told during his speech, and it is (obviously) not true in the slightest.
But the bigger picture is shaping up to be momentous in nature, and it is one that few so far have noticed. What Trump is doing is abdicating America's leadership role in the world (and in Europe, in particular). Instead of "America First!" he is turning us into "Isolation Nation." And the biggest beneficiary to date is not Russia (as one might expect), but China. Trump is well on his way to making China great again, to put it in Trumpian terms.
Consider the following actions Trump has taken, and their geopolitical consequences. First, Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Net result? China will become the dominant trade partner in the Pacific Rim region, and will be free to cut their own trade deals with numerous countries while the U.S. sits on the sidelines.
Trump refused to make good on his campaign promise to label China a currency manipulator. Supposedly he did this to urge China to rein in North Korea, but that hasn't noticeably happened yet. Instead, the net result was (again) favorable to China.
Trump, after promising in the Middle East that his first foreign trip wasn't going to include lecturing other countries, then went on to Europe... where he lectured both NATO and the European heads of state, in harsh terms. China didn't directly benefit from weakening NATO, although Russia did.
But in the aftermath of Trump's Paris announcement came the following news:
A day after President Trump pulled out of a key climate agreement, declaring he was fighting for "Pittsburgh, not Paris," an international realignment was already taking shape on Friday, as European and Chinese officials signed a raft of agreements to bind themselves tightly together. The pullout left the United States as a global outlier, and, many European leaders and experts said, a severely diminished force in the world. And it gave China fresh weight in a newly unbalanced landscape where longtime U.S. allies are searching for stability. . . . "Today China and Europe have demonstrated solidarity with future generations and responsibility for the whole planet. We are convinced that yesterday's decision by the United States to leave the Paris agreement is a big mistake," European Council President Donald Tusk said Friday after meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang. . . . The [three-and-a-half] days of meetings between Trump and the Europeans may stand as a turning point in an alliance that was born from the ashes of World War II, as Europe turns toward China and other economic partners it views as more stable.
The New York Times also picked up on this new dynamic:
In pulling out of the Paris climate accord, [Trump] has created a vacuum of global leadership that presents ripe opportunities to allies and adversaries alike to reorder the world's power structure.... His decision is perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world. China has long viewed the possibility of a partnership with Europe as a balancing strategy against the United States. Now, with Mr. Trump questioning the basis of NATO, the Chinese are hoping that their partnership with Europe on the climate accord may allow that relationship to come to fruition faster than their grand strategy imagined.
Remember when Trump used to rail against China for being so very unfair to the United States? Yeah, those were the days... now Trump's all about making China greater than America. If a Democratic president had done half so much to benefit China, Republicans would be angrily demanding they hew to the "American exceptionalism" line (with plenty of references to America as "the leader of the free world," no doubt) -- but with Trump, nary a peep from that direction is to be heard. How times have changed.
Of course, it's to be expected that partisans will support their president, but Trump toadies seem to have crossed over some sort of line into "Trump can do no wrong, Trump is our savior" territory. Watching the crowd shots of Trump's Rose Garden speech reminded us of nothing so much as North Korean politicians and military members (quite literally) clapping as if their very lives depended on it. Think this is overstating the case? We don't, or at least, not by much.
Last week, the Washington Post ran an article about how Trump was going ballistic on his aides on a regular basis, and how taking such abuse was par for the course for workers in the Trump White House. The White House responded with a stunning statement which sounds more like a translated North Korean press release:
President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. He has built great relationships throughout his life and treats everyone with respect. He is brilliant with a great sense of humor... and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible.
Wow. Just... wow. "Treats everyone with respect"? "An amazing ability to make people feel special"? Really?!? The only surprising thing about this statement is that it didn't actually use the phrase "Dear Leader."
Sean Spicer followed up on this extraordinary (and breathtaking) toadying by insisting that Donald Trump didn't just make a simple spelling mistake by tweeting "covfefe," but instead that "the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant." Again, this would have sounded better in the original Korean. In normal times, a press secretary would have just laughed it off ("C'mon, guys -- you've never misspelled a word or posted a tweet by mistake?"), but these are anything but normal times.
Still think comparing Trump to Kim Jong Un's regime is too much? Well, how about this story -- White House officials have apparently instructed all their executive branch agencies from honoring any requests for information from Democrats on oversight committees in Congress.
At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats.... It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale. The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.
Got that? Anything which makes the Dear Leader look bad will not be revealed. Because it's not like we live in an open democracy or anything. The United States government's primary function is now apparently to avoid making Trump look bad in any way.
Sheesh. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that what makes Donald Trump look the worst is... Donald Trump (and his trusty Twitter account). Irony alert: this all happened during the same week that the White House communications director quit, only four months into the (thankless) job.
While all of the distractions continue to, well, distract, Team Trump is getting a lot of things done under the radar. Kudos to Sam Stein at HuffPost for compiling a list of how Trump is changing America for the worse:
On regulatory policy, Trump's impact has far outpaced the coverage it's often received. He's made it harder for workers to set up retirement accounts and has delayed the implementation of workplace safety rules. He repealed a regulation protecting workers from wage theft and allowed employers with spotty labor records to get government contracts. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has hit the brakes on a rule that would require firms to report worker injury data online. Trump has given coal companies permission to dump debris into local streams and canceled requirements for reporting methane emissions. Both the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines have been allowed to proceed, and coal companies have been allowed to again lease on public lands. . . . And Trump has had a profound impact on women's health. He drastically expanded the so-called global gag rule, restricting a larger pool of funding from groups that mention or promote abortion, and he is poised to gut a mandate requiring employers to cover birth control for employees, broadening exemptions to the requirement that extend well beyond religious-affiliated groups.
Also notable, from the Washington Post:
The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House's newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights. . . . The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.
So it's not like there aren't plenty of stories out there that do indeed make Trump look bad or anything. No wonder they're so worried. If the mainstream media ever gets its head out of its covfefe, maybe a few more of these stories would become more high-profile.
Here's our candidate for a story that should be getting more attention, before we move along to this week's awards: the California senate just passed a bill to move the state to a single-payer health system. Now, this is not a done deal yet, especially since they neglected to address the thorny question of "how will it be paid for?" in the bill, but the California assembly might just fill in those blanks. Even if the bill did pass, though, it's a coin-toss whether Governor Jerry Brown would sign it or not -- but even with all the caveats, you'd think the biggest state in the nation (population-wise) moving ahead on single-payer would get slightly better coverage than it so far has outside the Golden State's borders. But then that'd interrupt all the Kathy Griffin and covfefe news, we suppose. Sigh.
Before we get to the main award, we do have to give Senator Heidi Heitkamp an Honorable Mention this week, for her handling a "tracker" -- an opposition researcher who follows candidates around in the hopes of getting something juicy on tape to use against them. When Heitkamp was faced with such a tracker, she decided the best thing to do was go over and chat with him. She tweeted a photo of the two together, saying: "Sterling is a tracker w/ America Rising who's following me around. Nice guy so won't hold it against him. Intro urself 2 him when u see him!" Now that's the way to handle an unfriendly face in the crowd! Well done, Senator Heitkamp -- we'd love to sees more acts of civility like this in politics, personally.
OK, on to the big news. In the aftermath of Trump's Paris decision, one voice quickly rose above the rest of the chorus condemning the decision. Maybe he's just got a better press relations team, but the face of the opposition quickly became that of Jerry Brown, four-time governor of California.
Brown not only blitzed the media with appearances, he made a very strong case on why Trump is so wrong to pull out of the Paris accords. He knocked down all the misstatements of fact Trump made, especially the ones about how fighting climate change will kill the economy.
Brown's on solid ground on this, because California has not only led the way among American states on fighting climate change, it has pioneered several methods of doing so. And guess what? California's economy is doing just fine, thank you very much. California has actually been accelerating its own timetable to convert its energy portfolio from fossil fuels to zero-emissions or renewable sources. Despite all these aggressive efforts to reduce carbon emissions, California's economy is booming. This easily proves that "fighting climate change kills the economy" is sheer nonsense.
But Brown isn't just out there making the case for why Trump's wrong and why what California is doing is right. He was also quick out of the gate with an announcement that three states (California, New York, and Washington) were banding together to reaffirm their own commitments to the Paris goals. Over time, this list will likely grow.
So for being a great spokesman who knocked down Trump's false claims, for showing the rest of the states that fighting climate change can actually help the economy, and for being pro-active in co-founding an effort to resist the Trump administration's attempt to turn back the clock, Jerry Brown is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.
[Congratulate California Governor Jerry Brown on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]
We thought we had a winner in this category this week, for playing the victim card once too often. But then came today's all-time victim card ploy which trumped (pun intended) any lesser disappointment.
So we only have a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award this week for Hillary Clinton. Now, in the recent past, we refused to give Clinton the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award for finger-pointing and blame-gaming why she lost the election. We took her at her word that she was busily writing her book, and that the full story would be told there, with plenty of self-examination when it came to assigning blame for her loss to Donald Trump.
Now, however, we're not so sure. Here is Clinton, from a speech she gave this week: "I was the victim of a very broad assumption I was going to win. I take responsibility for every decision I make -- but that's not why I lost."
Wow. That's some pretty serious "mistakes were made" dodging, there. She was the victim, mind you, of an assumption. Not that she herself assumed anything she shouldn't, of course. And she didn't lose because of any decisions she made (in a sentence designed to completely avoid any responsibility, the first three words notwithstanding).
This prompted an extraordinary tweet from Patti Solis Doyle, who was Clinton's campaign manager for her 2008 run: "I [heart] @HillaryClinton but I'm tired of hearing who/what she blames 4 loss. Want 2 hear how Ds can win in 2018, 2020 & beyond. Time 2 move on."
But the worst pushback Clinton received was for the following claim:
I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I'm now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party. I mean it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it -- the D.N.C. -- to keep it going.
One of the people responsible for the D.N.C. data operation hotly disputed this in a tweetstorm, thanking all the hard work the data team had done and calling Clinton's claim "fucking bullshit."
But Clinton's replaying of the victim card this week was vastly overshadowed by the Kathy Griffin press conference today. Now, we wrote about Griffin earlier this week, where we attempted to put her "clutching Trump's bloody head" video into a little perspective (without either defending or condemning her for it). But today's presser signified a whole new level in the game of playing the victim card.
Griffin tried to simultaneously defend her right to be a bully, while complaining that she was being bullied. By the man she had just caricatured as being decapitated. This is jaw-dropping. Here's just some of what she had to say today:
A sitting president of the United States and his grown children and the first lady are personally trying to ruin my life forever. You guys know him, he's not going to stop.... I'm not good at being appropriate. I'm only good at doing comedy one way. It's in your face. I'm going to make fun of the president. And I'm going to do it more now.... The threats that I am getting are... detailed and they are specific. And today it's me, but tomorrow it might be you. I don't think I'll have a career after this. I'm going to be honest, he broke me.
He broke you?!? Wow. As Hunter S. Thompson said: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Most bullies have incredibly thin skin. Kathy Griffin has made a career out of being what is politely called an "insult comic." It's her whole schtick, in fact, and she once saw herself as the next Joan Rivers. But insult comedy, at heart, is just really funny bullying (at least when done right, such as pretty much any routine by Triumph The Insult Comic Dog). But if you can dish this sort of thing out, then you'd better be well prepared to take it when someone hits you back.
Trump's a pretty thin-skinned bully himself, of course. There's no denying that. Even so, he had every right to chime in on the controversy. Him doing so did not start this fight. Griffin did. That is inescapable. You simply cannot claim with a straight face that you're "not good at being appropriate" while complaining of inappropriate behavior towards yourself. You cannot promise to "do it more" and be "in your face" while demanding that others cease and get out of your face.
We have no idea whether Kathy Griffin is a registered Democrat or not, but we're waiving the rule since she jumped into the political debate on the anti-Trump side. Without a shadow of a doubt, Kathy Griffin deserves our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award -- not for her initial attempt at comedy, and not for how provocative and controversial it was -- but solely for trying to pin all the blame on her professional woes now on Donald Trump and his family. That is beyond chutzpah. It is beyond believability. You picked this fight, Kathy, so if you can't stand the heat, why did you enter this particular kitchen in the first place?
[Contact Kathy Griffin via Twitter, to let her know what you think of her actions.]
Volume 439 (6/2/17)
Before we begin, we have a few items that just didn't fit anywhere else. The first is to challenge everyone to come up with their own amusing definitions of "covfefe" -- the nonsense word that Trump tweeted. We've already (kind of) done so in our first few paragraphs today, but we certainly can't claim to be the first to come up with that particular definition. So far, the best responses we've read came from Representative Jared Huffman of California, who tweeted: "'Covfefe' is Russian for 'please don't release those Kompromat tapes!'" and from Representative Ted Lieu (also from the Golden State) who simply responded: "Yrsvjseubpihfcovswtvnjhgfefesxnklimnq." Heh. So, anyone seen anything funnier? Got your own take on covfefe? Do tell! Let everyone see down in the comments....
Secondly, any regular reader of our columns knows two things that set us off (in different directions). The first is how few days Congress actually works. The second is our love of a good chart or graphic representation of any particular set of hard-to-comprehend data. Which is why we just had to stick a link in here to a Washington Post story with a couple of extraordinary (and long!) charts, which show the days Congress works versus the days they take off. The second chart is the best, because it breaks down weekdays when Congress works versus weekdays when they are off. Anyone with any doubt that this is an absolute travesty, just take a gander at that second chart.
Bugaboos aside, though, let's get right to the talking points.
Dear Leader
Can't resist this one....
"Donald Trump should really just go ahead and proclaim himself America's official 'Dear Leader,' since it seems now to be official White House policy that Trump is some sort of demigod who strides the Earth. First there was the statement which (Are you sitting down? Because this is pretty funny...) said Trump 'has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him.' Trump also has 'an unparalleled ability to communicate with people,' and furthermore is 'brilliant with a great sense of humor... and an amazing ability to make people feel special.' Sean Spicer can't even admit that Trump made up the word 'covfefe,' but then Sean's job seems to be hanging by a thread these days, so it's not like you can blame him personally for insisting that the Dear Leader is simply incapable of making a mistake, no matter how small. Plus the news that the Trump administration is going to refuse to release any information to Democratic congressmen which 'could be used to attack the president.' At the rate this is going, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear Sean Spicer swear one day soon that Dear Leader Trump just shot an 18-stroke round of golf, because he got a hole-in-one on every single hole. Because that is definitely the direction this is all heading, folks."
Programs! Getchyer programs here!
It is very hard to keep up, these days, without a scorecard.
"The Washington Post has just posted a rather handy page that lists all the Trump administration officials and former officials who are now being investigated in the ongoing Trump/Russia scandal. We certainly hope they maintain this page, because it's already hard to keep track of how many people are under the microscope of the F.B.I., the congressional committees, and the special counsel's office. No doubt this list will grow over time, so it's convenient to have one place to look that lists them all. I mean, when you go to a baseball game, you have to get a program to appreciate what's going on, right?"
Truly offensive
This is a dodge. We fully admit it. But Democrats have to have something ready to say when the inevitable Kathy Griffin questions come up (something beyond just "Ted Nugent did it too!"). A simple denouncement is good, but here's something better.
"When the subject of beheading arises, I'll tell you what I find truly offensive. Donald Trump just went to Saudi Arabia and refused to mention human rights at all -- he said he 'wasn't going to lecture' them. What this did was to give them a green light to accelerate the pace of executing their own citizens -- by cutting heads off with a sword. A 'terrorism' court there just upheld a death sentence against a 23-year-old disabled man for peacefully protesting his government. His conviction was based on a confession obtained under torture. As a leading watchdog of Saudi executions put it: 'it appears that president Trump's recent visit, and his explicit approval of the Saudi regime despite gross human rights abuses, may have emboldened Saudi authorities, who are now signalling their intention to resume protest-related executions.' So let's talk about real beheadings -- of peaceful protesters -- because that's what I find truly offensive."
Congress-shaming
This is an ongoing effort that needs to continue and expand.
"I have a new political term to introduce: Congress-shaming. Congress-shaming is what several Democrats and Democratic groups are now doing to bring attention to all of those Republicans in Congress who are too afraid to speak to their own constituents and defend their recent votes. Congressman Darrell Issa was spotted on a rooftop recently, avoiding protesters at one of his district offices. Senator Pat Toomey refuses to hold town halls anymore, so one was held with an empty suit in his place. Devin Nunes wouldn't meet with his constituents, so they put a cardboard cutout of him onstage instead. The event moderator noted: 'He unfortunately had to recuse himself from attending this event because he's too busy not investigating the Kremlin.' Planned Parenthood sponsored a hunt for Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who refuses to hold town halls. They called it a 'valiant quest to find Ms. Comstock,' and promised that 'volunteers will be equipped with any food and water the currently missing representative may require.' Republicans are refusing to meet with their constituents because it is now so painfully evident what the Republican agenda will really mean for average Americans. When they do, they need a healthy dose of Congress-shaming."
Speaking of that agenda...
New poll numbers are in, and they're pretty bad.
"A recent poll on the House 'American Health Care Act' bill showed how massively unpopular it is with the public. Fully 55 percent disapprove of this legislation, and only a pathetic eight percent want to see it passed as it now stands. Those are pretty bad numbers, but it gets even worse for Republicans. Because this poll was actually conducted before the C.B.O. report came out which showed what a disaster the A.H.C.A. would be. So this was the public's opinion before they learned that 23 million people would be losing their insurance. I'd hate to see the polling after the C.B.O. report, because those numbers are already pretty dismal."
Deepen the swamp!
Yet another Trump promise broken, bigly.
"Remember when Trump promised he'd 'drain the swamp' in Washington, while campaigning? He had a very specific definition of what this would mean, as shown by this late-October tweet from last year: 'I am going to expand the definition of LOBBYIST -- so we close all the LOOPHOLES! #DrainTheSwamp.' Now it appears what he really meant was 'I am going to expand all the LOOPHOLES -- so we get more and more LOBBYISTS in Washington! #FillTheSwamp.' The Trump administration admitted this week that it has issued 17 ethics waivers to allow lobbyists in and allow for exemptions of conflict-of-interest rules in their first four months in office. This is exactly the same number of ethics waivers that the Obama administration issued in eight full years. So rather than draining any so-called swamp, Trump appears to be restocking the swamp with bigger alligators. Or something. At this point, it's hard to tell what he's doing, really."
God'll sort it out!
And we finish with what might be called the "head in the sand award" of the week.
"In an updated version of 'kill them all and let God sort them out,' Republican Representative Tim Walberg helpfully explained why he's not personally worried about climate change to a constituent. He said, and I quote: 'I believe there's climate change. I believe there's been climate change since the beginning of time. I believe there are cycles. Do I think man has some impact? Yeah, of course. Can man change the entire universe? No. Why do I believe that? Well, as a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I'm confident that, if there's a real problem, He can take care of it.' Got that? God'll take care of everything, so why worry about it? Sadly, Walberg is probably not the only Republican in Congress with what might appropriately be called an antediluvian attitude."
Chris Weigant blogs at:
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank