HERE'S TRUMP'S PLAN TO RUN THE USUAL REPUBLICAN TRICK PLAY

Most people expect the 2018 elections to be a referendum on President Trump, with Republicans attempting to focus voters' attention on tax cuts and low unemployment.

You know what I always say: Republicans always look for a way to distract voters as elections approach, and in non-presidential elections they usually succeed. Today Axios's Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan confirm that Trump plans to run the Republicans' favorite trick play again:

Here's Trump's real plan for '18:

* A source close to the White House tells me that with an eye to getting Republicans excited about voting for Republicans in midterms, the president this year will be looking for "unexpected cultural flashpoints" — like the NFL and kneeling — that he can latch onto in person and on Twitter.

* The source said Trump "is going to be looking for opportunities to stir up the base, more than focusing on any particular legislation or issue."

... that is more evidence for our continuing reminder to you that Trump will be more Trump this year....

Remember that Trump has a couple of weapons Republicans didn't have in 2010 and 2014: In addition to Fox and right-wing websites, he'll have Russians amplifying his message on sketchy news sites and social media, as well as (I suspect) a domestic network of bots and/or paid trolls operating on a Russian model. The research and development will be done by Trump's outside allies, particularly Fox -- Trump's job is just to tweet, or to press a given issue in one of the many campaign appearances he's likely to make because he loves campaigning so much.

This year, however, it really might not work -- Democrats haven't been as fired up for a midterm election since 2006, and the would-be wedge issues Trump chooses might backfire and infuriate his opponents instead. But Republicans are going to fight to set the terms of the debate -- and if they succeed, we won't be talking about Trump or about policy.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS BETA-TESTING DACA DEPORTATIONS, AND THE TESTS ARE A HUGE SUCCESS

Today's Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times is about Syed Jamal, a chemistry professor in Lawrence, Kansas, who's in the process of being deported after living in America for three decades.

In Lawrence, Kan., the other day, immigration agents handcuffed a beloved chemistry professor as he was leaving his home to drive his daughter to school. Then they warned his crying wife and children, ages 7 to 14, that they could be arrested if they tried to hug him goodbye, and drove off with him — leaving a shattered family behind.

... Syed A. Jamal, 55, had been in America for 30 years, having arrived legally from Bangladesh as a student, before overstaying his visa. He loved Kansas and settled in Lawrence, teaching at local colleges and volunteering at local schools — even running for the school board. He coached students in science and sports.

... Jamal, who seems just about the least dangerous person in America, is now in jail pending deportation to Bangladesh. A court intervened with a temporary stay as the government was trying to rush him out of the country.

But when I go to the the page listing the "Most Popular" items at the Times, this column is nowhere to be found. It's not among the ten "Most Emailed," "Most Viewed," "Most Shared on Facebook," or "Most Tweeted" Times stories. There's much more interest in stories about Rob Porter and U.S. spies trying to retrieve stolen cyberweapons. Maureen Dowd's latest column is popular. Readers are interested in the Olympics and tilapia.

There's another awful immigration story at HuffPost.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to deport an undocumented man from Mexico whose child is battling cancer.

On Thursday, ICE denied an extension to remain in the U.S. for 30-year-old Jesus Berrones, who lives in Arizona with his pregnant wife and five children....

Berrones has been living in the U.S. since he was 1½, when his parents brought him here in 1989, according to his wife, Sonia. In 2006, at age 19, Berrones was caught driving with a fake license and deported to Mexico. He then twice re-entered the country unlawfully to rejoin his family.

In 2016, ICE granted Berrones a stay of removal based on his son’s illness....

Last year, under the new Trump administration, Berrones went to ICE to refile a stay, and officials told him it was not necessary because he was no longer a deportation priority, Wilkes said. But in January, Berrones got a notice from ICE that he would be deported. The lawyer filed another request for a stay, but it was recently denied.

Berrones’ 5-year-old son has been battling leukemia since 2016 and is undergoing chemotherapy. Berrones is the family’s sole breadwinner.

It's not a trending story at HuffPost.

Can you recall an immigration story that truly went viral -- not just among progressives who are focused on the issue, but among the public at large? Can you name a deported immigrant whose name became as well known as Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown?

It's been argued that the Trump administration is engaged in especially cruel immigration arrests out of pure racism or sadism. Those are among the obvious motives -- but this is also a test, one that we're failing as a nation.

Many people believe that Republicans really don't want to allow DACA protection to lapse because Dreamers have widespread support, and widescale deportations of them will look terrible on the news. Polling does show that support for the Dreamers runs as high as 81% -- but it's clear that it's shallow support. Like support for universal gun background checks or a ban on bump stocks, support for sympathetic undocumented immigrants is widespread but doesn't inspire passion -- the passion is overwhelmingly on the minority side. Gun lovers and immigrant haters will absolutely turn out to vote based on how they feel about gun policy or immigration law. The evidence suggests that our side won't.

On immigration, obviously, this isn't true in states and districts with large Hispanic populations. But most Republican officeholders are elected from places where that are overwhelmingly white. Why should they fear a backlash if no deported immigrant's name is ever trending on Twitter?

It's possible that our epidemic of gun violence has finally begun to motivated voters in Republican states and districts; we'll find out in November. But even the most appalling deportations aren't having the same effect. So what motive do Republicans in Congress or the president and his staff have to sign on to a compromise that saves the Dreamers?

TRUMP WILL NEVER RELEASE THE DEMOCRATIC MEMO, BECAUSE REPUBLICANS DON'T BELIEVE DEMOCRATS ARE AMERICANS

Of course he didn't approve the memo's release. Of course all that talk about "transparency" was a lie.

President Trump on Friday blocked the release of a classified Democratic memo rebutting Republican claims that top federal law enforcement officials had abused their powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide, a move that Democrats denounced as politically motivated hypocrisy.

... Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s lawyer, said in a letter to the committee on Friday night that the Democratic memo could not be released because it “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” He said the president would again consider making the memo public if the committee, which had approved its release on Monday, revised it to “mitigate the risks.”

He won't release it under any circumstances. No rewrites or redactions will change his mind. I don't care that Trump himself has said that a revised memo will be reconsidered (in a tweet that was obviously ghostwritten -- it contains no unnecessary capital letters or quotation marks, and includes the not-all-all-Trumpian word "whereupon").

The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018

The memo is being suppressed because every Fox viewer in good standing agrees that Democrats aren't Americans. Nothing that is the work of Democrats is good for America. Everything Democrats do is intended to harm America. These are core elements of the Fox faith.

The argument of Devin Nunes's Republican memo is that nothing Christopher Steele reported could possibly be anything other than a damnable lie because he was being paid by Democrats. The FBI can't weigh the partisan origins of Steele's dossier against his professional experience and previous reliability as an espionage agent -- he sacrificed all claims to credibility when he took money from Democrats. The moment he accepted that first Democratic payment, he became the prince of lies.

Republicans, of course, also want Hillary Clinton investigated for her alleged role in the Uranium One deal, which was sinister according to a book bankrolled by top fundraisers for Breitbart and the Trump campaign. Republicans have no problem with starting a law enforcement investigation based on that book. They don't object to fruit from a partisan tree. They object only to fruit from a Democratic tree. Because Democrats are evil.

DONALD TRUMP, OBLIVIOUS IN HIS OWN WORLD

When it comes to Rob Porter and his victims, President Trump can't even fake human decency:

... Mr. Trump on Friday warmly praised Mr. Porter, saying it was a “tough time” for his former aide and noting that Mr. Porter had denied the accusations.

“We wish him well,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Porter, who was accused of physical and emotional abuse by two ex-wives. The president added, “He also, as you probably know, says he is innocent, and I think you have to remember that.”

“He worked very hard,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked for a comment about Mr. Porter. The president said he had only “recently” learned of the allegations against his former aide and was surprised.

“He did a very good job when he was in the White House, and we hope he has a wonderful career, and he will have a great career ahead of him,” Mr. Trump said. “But it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he’s also very sad now.”

I don't expect a man as sexist, self-involved, and empathy-challenged as Trump to genuinely understand the pain of Porter's victims. But Trump can't even fake it. He doesn't have enough cultural awareness to know what he's expected to say in this situation. I know he probably regards himself as being so bulletproof that he doesn't have to say the expected thing, but he doesn't even seem to know what the expected thing is. It's as if he's completely oblivious to the world we live in, a world in which giving your wife a black eye is appalling.

On many subjects, it's clear that Trump has no idea how the rest of us think. He believes that the gaudy piss-elegance of his hotels is seen as the quintessence of swank. He seems completely unaware of the fact that the gold-plated more-is-more decor is widely regarded as tacky. He doesn't seem to be like Liberace, someone who acknowledged that the snobs looked down on him but who decided he didn't care. Trump genuinely seems not to know that his design sense is regarded as ridiculous.

Another example: the hair. I know he's 71 years old. I know he grew up in an era of toupees and combovers. But I'm not much younger -- 58 -- and all my life toupees and combovers have been comedy punch lines. Now I see balding men stylishly avoiding dishonesty by opting for buzzcuts or the clean-shaven look. You can say that Trump is of an older generation, but chrome-domed John Malkovich is 64. Rudy Giuliani, who gave up the combover for the close-cropped look, is 73 -- older than Trump -- and a Trump backer. Trump seems literally unaware of the fact that these approaches to baldness are widely seen as much more appealing than his desperate fakery.

Trump lives in his own mind, which seems never to come in contact with the rest of the world.

DONALD TRUMP IS A WEAK LITTLE MAN AND IS REALLY TERRIBLE AT HIS JOB

Even though, as Axios's Jonathan Swan reports, the failings of chief of staff John Kelly are now regarded as a full-blown crisis in the White House....

The Rob Porter crisis has become a John Kelly crisis, and it has now totally engulfed the West Wing....

Kelly still has not adequately answered when he became aware of the horrific allegations against Porter....

The official White House line — that Kelly only became “fully aware” of the domestic assault allegations when the Daily Mail story broke — doesn’t pass the smell test.

... and even though Trump doesn't like Kelly...

The only thing Trump resents more than being handled by staff is when an aide tells the world they’re educating Trump about an issue he thinks he has mastered. Kelly managed to commit both sins in a recent interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, in which he said Trump’s views on immigration had evolved since the campaign, partly under Kelly’s tutelage.

... and even though Kelly has had a series of gaffes...

* Falsely claiming that Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson had tried to take credit for securing the funding for an FBI building.

* Calling Confederate general Robert E. Lee “honorable” and blaming the Civil War on a lack of compromise.

* Describing illegal immigrants who didn’t apply for DACA as “too lazy to get off their asses.”

... Swan believes Trump won't fire him:

What we're hearing: It's not surprising that Trump would make noises about getting rid of Kelly. But sources close to the president don’t believe he has it in him to actually pull the trigger.

* Yes, Kelly frustrates Trump. Yes, Trump complains about him. Yes, the two have never developed the personal chemistry — full of off-color jokes and nicknames like Hopey (Hope Hicks) and Reincey (Reince Priebus) — that Trump has formed with some of his other advisers....

[But] “Trump is not going to fire him,” [a] source close to the president said. “And does Trump have the stomach to do what he normally does when he’s fed up with them? He usually makes their lives miserable, publicly humiliates them. But now he’s up against somebody who doesn’t care and would happily leave.”

Trump is a pathetic weakling. He's the most powerful person in the world -- at least based on his job title -- yet he can't bring himself to dismiss a subordinate who's exercised terrible judgment in his job and has brought shame on the White House. Trump won't tell Kelly he's fired because he's afraid Kelly won't talk him out of it.

Also, who's going to take the job if Kelly leaves? Trump and his team don't seem to have any good ideas for a replacement. The New York Times says Trump has been complaining about Kelly to Reince Priebus, who was forced out of the job last year in favor of Kelly. Would Trump really hire Priebus back? It's possible. But Priebus wasn't good at the job and brought no relevant experience to it.

(Another possibility mentioned in the same Times article: Mick Mulvaney, who's already doing two jobs for Trump. Would he quit them or would he do three jobs?)

Nobody with appropriate skills wants to work in Trump's White House, and Trump, however much he may regard himself as a "disrupter" who's rewriting the rules of how Washington works, doesn't have any clever ideas about who can do key jobs without what traditionalists regard as appropriate skills. He just reaches out to anyone who seems to be willing and vaguely qualified -- or he keeps incompetents in place because firing people scares him.

What a pathetic person he is.

THE ROB PORTER DEBACLE: BLAME JAVANKA?

The Daily Beast reports that Corey Lewandowski was one of the people spreading stories about Rob Porter.

On Tuesday afternoon, senior White House officials reached out to Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) office with an urgent request. They needed the Utah Republican to put together a statement praising his former chief of staff and then-White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter.

At issue was a story that was about to pop from the British tabloid, the Daily Mail, in which two of Porter’s ex-wives detailed the emotional and physical abuse they endured by him.

The White House officials told Hatch’s office that the story was the product of a “smear campaign” being orchestrated against Porter by his political enemies. Among those they pinpointed was former Trump campaign manager (and current outside adviser to the president) Corey Lewandowski, according to two sources familiar with the conversations. Multiple White House staffers told Hatch himself that Lewandowski “was digging into Rob’s previous marriages,” recalled one source, who said Porter himself was among the officials who fingered Lewandowski.

Why might Lewandowski want to create a scandal for an administration he's informally advising? An obvious answer is that, according to reports, he was once romantically involved with Hope Hicks, President Trump's communications director, who's now said to be involved with Porter.

But maybe he also resented the fact that Porter has a job in the White House, and he can't get one. A couple of days ago, Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman reported this about the president's desire to remake his staff:

[A] scenario being discussed is that Trump could fill the strategist role [formerly held by Steve Bannon] with Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager Dave Bossie. Both have the aggressive personality Trump favors. But neither one has anything resembling West Wing experience, and both face stiff opposition from Ivanka and Jared Kushner. “They have blocked Corey at every turn. They kept him from going into [the] family box at the inaugural,” one former campaign staffer told me. “If Corey gets back in, they’re not long for the place.”

If Lewandowski could have been rehired by the White House,is it possible that he wouldn't have tried as hard as he did to bring down Porter?

Given the Hunger Games nature of this White House, maybe Lewandowski would have gone after Porter anyway. But a job might have placated him.

So if it weren't for the sexual and professional jealousy of a frustrated ex-White House employee who has anger management issues of his own, the White House never would have let Porter go, something it should have done a year ago. Lewandowski did the right thing for the wrong reasons, Ivanka and Jared are inept Machiavellis, and everyone in this White House is awful.

WHY DOES IT SHOCK JENNIFER RUBIN THAT THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT SHRUGS OFF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

I'm grateful for Jennifer Rubin's high level of outrage at Donald Trump and the people who back him. But does it really surprise her that religious-right groups were silent when they learned that White House aide Rob Porter is a spousal abuser?

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) was blunt about the Rob Porter issue. “I have no use for anybody who beats their spouse,” he said....

That’s a lot more than we have heard from any of the so-called values voter groups that profess concern for the family. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, gave President Trump a “mulligan” on his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.... Surely his group has something to say about a White House aide whose two ex-wives have presented compelling accounts (in one case a photograph of her battered eye) and who reportedly failed to get a full security clearance.... We asked FRC for comment. No one has responded. Its website makes no mention of the matter.

Concerned Women for America, which claims a membership of hundreds of thousands of women, lists as one of its concerns “the alarming increase in violence in American households, including same-sex and opposite-sex partner assaults, spousal assaults, and child and elder abuse.” Its website explains that one of its goals is to bring “an end to violence within households, especially the sexual abuse of children, while reinforcing the importance and autonomy of healthy families.” I asked CWA for comment on Porter. I have received no response.

Maybe Rubin doesn't remember, but both of these organizations opposed reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2012 and 2013. A 2012 email from Concerned Women for America laid out reasons for the group's opposition:

It is astounding that the left’s “war on woman” has some senators afraid to oppose a bad bill simply because it’s titled, “The Violence Against Women Act.”

This legislation, which is normally a boondoggle for feminists groups, has become even more political this Congress. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), S. 1925, creates new protections for homosexuals. In order to receive federal grants, domestic violence organizations have to agree to embrace the homosexual agenda. It also expands categories of who is eligible to receive services.

CWA's Janice Crouse clarified what that last sentence means on a 2012 radio show:

... you have a number of women from other countries who marry Americans to come to this country, and then they want out of the marriage. Well, VAWA provides a way for them to get out, a very easy way for them to get out.

Yes, heaven forbid that a law should help immigrant women escape abusive marriages.

On that radio show, Crouse also said:

Quite frankly, much of the Violence Against Women funds reeducating programs for judges to try to train them in the principles of feminism and so-called ’women’s rights.’

So who cares if it helps victims of abuse? It advances the cause of "so-called ’women’s rights.’"! Can't have that!

The Family Research Council also opposed reauthorization:

In an email alert ... the FRC decried the VAWA ("which, ironically, is supported by the same administration that wants to put women in front-line combat!") as an "abuse of taxpayer dollars" that "does more to promote a radical agenda than it does to help women."

The email quoted conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who also opposes VAWA. "In its 17 years of operation," Schlafly wrote on TownHall.com, VAWA "has done little or no good for real victims of domestic violence, while its funds have been used to fill feminist coffers and to lobby for feminist objectives and laws. Although every spending bill should be subject to rigorous auditing procedures in order to curb waste and fraud, VAWA has somehow ducked accountability for the [$660 million] a year it doles out to radical feminist organizations."

The FRC didn't just oppose reauthorization -- it scored the vote:

The Family Research Council is taking VAWA opposition so seriously that it’s told congressional Republicans that this vote will be scored – if they want to maintain a high rating on religious right scorecards, they’ll have to vote against reauthorization.

The Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized in 2013, with unanimous support of all voting Democrats and independents, but 138 Republicans voted no in the House and 22 in the Senate.

Domestic violence is like so many other issues for the right -- it's secondary to the fight for conservative dominance. In 2012 and 2013, the religious right used the VAWA reauthorization fight as an excuse to bash gay people, immigrants, and feminists. In 2018, spousal abuse is deemed less important than standing with President Trump. It's not about morality for these people. It's about winning.

THERE MUST BE AN ADULT IN THE ROOM HERE SOMEWHERE!

At the end of a short Axios item on the resignation of serial spouse abuser Rob Porter, who was vigorously defended by the president's chief of staff, we're told the following:

Watch for: a glut of stories analyzing the M.O. and character of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, along with speculation about consequences for him.

That prediction may be correct. Already today, The New York Times has a Gail Collins op-ed chastizing Kelly for his defense of Porter, his offensive remarks about the alleged laziness of DACA-eligible immigrants, and other Trump-like acts.

But over at The Washington Post, I see this:

Throughout his 40-year career as a Marine, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis built a reputation as an aggressive warrior, leading a blitz on Baghdad and pushing a reluctant Obama administration to hit back against Iran.

Over the past year, he has learned to play a different role: acting as a check on an impulsive president.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but just as we're learning that John Kelly isn't the general we can count on to be "the adult in the room" with President Trump, the Post is praising another of "Trump's generals" for exemplary adultitude. In her op-ed, Collins also praises Mattis:

Even in this administration, it’s possible to be better. Think about Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who’s trying to get Congress to pass a defense budget. Not necessarily easy under normal circumstances, and definitely harder when the president is prioritizing that super-duper military parade.

Asked about Trump’s goal to recreate Bastille Day in Washington, Mattis said mildly that he was “putting together some options” and moved on. He did not claim the House of Representatives was too lazy to get up off its ass and do what the White House wants.

Maybe Mattis could be chief of staff.

Yup, and maybe if we move a few more deck chairs, the Titanic won't sink.

#TIMESNEVERUP FOR REPUBLICANS

If it disgusts you that the White House defended staff secretary Rob Porter even as it became clear that he abused two ex-wives, if it infuriates you that the Republican National Committee and the Trump inauguration fund haven't returned contributions from serial sexual predator Steve Wynn, and if it maddens you that the president of the United States is a self-acknowledged sexual abuser, let me also remind you that, far from the White House, this guy is still governor:

... Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens ... admitted to [a] 2015 affair on Jan. 10 in a statement where he admitted to being “unfaithful” to his marriage. However, he denied accusations that he had used blackmail to keep the woman quiet about the affair.

The woman’s ex-husband had an audio recording of a conversation between him and his former wife discussing the nature of her relationship with Greitens, who, a year after the affair, went on to be elected governor, according to St. Louis television station KMOV. The recording includes details alleging Greitens took a compromising photo of her while she was wearing a blindfold and said he would share it if she spoke about their relationship.

One of the organizations founded to combat sexual predation is called Time's Up -- but Republicans seem to be building a countermovement that could be called Time's Never Up. The Republican approach to these scandals is simple: Deny everything. Do nothing to acknowledge the outrage. Wait for the news cycle to move on. Repeat ad nauseam. it might have worked in Porter's case if he hadn't decided to step aside. Hell, even after he announced that he wanted to step aside, the White House was defending him.

Many men have been forced to give up positions of power in the past few months because they've been exposed as sexual predators. This is happening because the organizations they work for feel responsive to the public.

The Republican Party doesn't. It's responsive only to its base, and its base doesn't care about this. The rest of us have to hold Republicans to account, because Republican voters won't.

FRANK RICH REFRESHES OUR MEMORIES, THEN MISSES THE POINT (updated)

Frank Rich looks at the GOP's current attacks on law enforcement and reminds us that they're nothing new:

Let’s not forget that in the 1990s the GOP and its rabid talk-radio auxiliary winked, nodded, and at times endorsed a gun-crazy right-wing militia movement that demonized Justice Department law-enforcement agents as “jack-booted thugs.” ... Newt Gingrich, then House Speaker, went so far as to appoint one of his caucus’s most reckless anti-government radicals, Representative Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, to a congressional gun task force; Chenoweth had floated a bill that would require armed federal agents to seek the permission of local sheriffs to enter their counties when pursuing law enforcement. The GOP retreated from tacit tolerance of the crazies in their ranks only after Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, leaving 168 dead. But only temporarily.

Some 15 years later, this strain reemerged, first at Sarah Palin rallies, and then during the hysterical tea-party summer of 2010. That year, Steve King, the redoubtable congressman from Iowa, all but condoned the domestic terrorist who flew a plane into a federal building in Texas in protest of the IRS: “It’s an agency that is unnecessary,” he argued. Republicans looked the other way as attendees showed up with assault weapons at presidential health-care rallies.

But a couple of paragraphs later, Rich completely misreads the president:

It’s not just an idle daydream that Trump is now calling on the Pentagon to stage a costly Washington parade to show off America’s military might. His aim here, I’d suggest, is not just to impress North Korea and other American adversaries but to draw the military closer to him for when the crunch comes. He is hoping that the generals he constantly flatters (and appoints to White House posts) will be “loyal” to him when federal law enforcement, including the judiciary, or a potential post–Election Day Democratic majority in Congress, try to hold him accountable.

That's absurd. Trump isn't doing this to impress or flatter the military -- he's doing it because he wants reflected glory from the military. He wants to dazzle the world, not honor the servicemembers.

And there's reason to believe that the troops aren't looking forward to a parade at all. In the comments to my last post, djchefron flagged this tweet:

The Army subreddit is looking forward to the military parade. pic.twitter.com/hjTzBRUtKp

— Soldier Jane (@sgtjanedoe) February 7, 2018

And in response to the previous post, commenter Bob Aho wrote:

As a participant in Military parades, I can say without hesitation or doubt, man those things suck. I know you think it's all marching but it is not, you are standing, then standing, and then that is followed by more standing around. (The command is called Parade Rest - and it sucks!) Eventually one marches for a couple of minutes, but then it is back to stand around some more. I envision mass desertion or multiple requests for overseas deployments, because it sucks worse anything you can imagine. (Think of a dress uniform in Washington heat.)

Why would a useless exercise like this endear Trump to the generals? Especially when he's obviously going to make it all about himself, not the troops?

****

UPDATE, THURSDAY: Charlie Pierce put the question to the troops.

In the past couple of hours, I’ve heard from 14 stars worth of generals. Not a single one supported this. Many told me their stories of how they personally avoided parades as cadets or young officers. And that is just the generals. My inbox was flooded from enlisted and officers of lower ranks. Bottom Line: We all hate parades. We do not want one. What do we want? Why don't you ask us, Mr. President?

So no, this is not endearing Trump to the generals.

RIGHT-WING MEDIA: PARADE? WHAT PARADE?

You'd assume that President Trump's plans for a military parade in Washington would be a big story in the right-wing media, but no. Search for the word "parade" on the Drudge Report page and you'll find it buried in the rightmost column, in tiny type. The word doesn't appear anywhere on the front page of FoxNews.com or Gateway Pundit (at both sites the lead story is some allegedly game-changing revelation from a Peter Strzok-Lisa Page text message). "Parade" also appears nowhere on the front page at National Review, although the Corner has a snarky post from Kevin D. Williamson with allusions to North Korea, mirrored sunglasses, and epaulettes. Breitbart does have a front-page story, but its lead story is "Grassley-Graham Memo: Dossier Author Christopher Steele Lied to FBI, FBI Didn’t Tell FISA Court."

It's possible that they're all waiting for a coordinated set of talking points, but I think it's more likely that conservatives are simply no longer united by the belief that they embody (and have a monopoly on) patriotism. In the Reagan and George W. Bush years, a parade of this kind would have been intended to transmit a simple message: We love America. Join us. It would have been intended as outreach to voting blocs outside the Republican base: blue-collar families in the Rust Belt during the Reagan years, "security moms" in the Bush years. Trust us, the parade would say. We'll defend you. We'll keep you safe.

But the contemporary right doesn't seem to care very much about that. The contemporary right cares more about open combat with Democrats, and dark tales of Deep State perfidy that are barely comprehensible outside the cult.

For the conservative press, the war against the Russia investigation is so all-consuming that writers and editors can't turn away from it. That's what matters: defending the #MAGA God Emperor and crushing his foes. They can't be bothered with a military parade because they're too busy fighting a war.

JUST LET HIM HAVE HIS RIDICULOUS PARADE

I don't actually think the president is baiting us with this, but I see a lot of liberals rising to it as if it's bait:

President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces....

“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”

If Trump were smart, he'd be using this to troll liberals. If he were a shrewd, cynical manipulator of public opinion, like the message-shapers of the Reagan administration, he'd be using this to drive a wedge between his critics and heartlanders, who'll take this at face value and embrace it (though probably not as enthusiastically as they might have in the 1980s, when their anger at '60s/'70s critics of America was still raw). If he were an adept totalitarian, he'd use this as a genuine assertion of his power.

But he's Trump, so he'll just spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ship weaponry to the streets of D.C. because he's an overgrown eleven-year-old boy still mentally living in the 1950s, and also because he's a crushingly insecure plutocrat who needs a steady succession of gaudy displays in order to feel that he's adequately demonstrating his own greatness to the world.

This parade won't be part of a grand plan to crush democracy in America -- there won't be roaming goon squads, and a protest will probably be permitted, though at some distance from the main event. Trump might want the parade to intimidate foreign foes, but it won't accomplish that goal, because the military will probably agree to display only weapons our enemies already know about. This will just be a pointless moment of excess, with Trump using weapons the way, in his hotels, he uses gilt.

Fox will broadcast the entire parade live -- and in order to avoid McCarthyite attacks, so will MSNBC and CNN. The coverage on Fox will be ecstatic (I'm guessing the Fox & Friends crew will do the honors), while on MSNBC, Chris Matthews will probably match the Fox crew in enthusiasm, reprising his embarrassing performance on "Mission Accomplished" day in 2003.

And then it will be over, and we'll be the same country we were beforehand. Trump will have gotten his testosterone rush. The real work of harming America will be taking place elsewhere, in meetings of House and Senate Republicans and in Cabinet-level departments run by cynical, grasping officials who despise ordinary Americans.

Seriously: Don't get worked up about this. If you get worked up about this, your resentment will be the story: There go the liberals, hating America again. Don't give them the satisfaction. Seventy-two hours after it's over, we'll be chasing some ridiculous Trump tweet, and no one will remember the parade even happened.

BRATTY GIULIANI SON IS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S IDEA OF A DRUG POLICY EXPERT

This Politico story is getting a lot of attention:

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has taken control of the opioids agenda, quietly freezing out drug policy professionals and relying instead on political staff to address a lethal crisis claiming about 175 lives a day....

Trump is expected to propose massive cuts this month to the “drug czar” office, just as he attempted in last year’s budget before backing off. He hasn’t named a permanent director for the office, and the chief of staff was sacked in December....

Conway touts her opioids effort as policy-driven, telling POLITICO recently that her circle of advisers help “formalize and centralize strategy, coordinate policy, scheduling and public awareness” across government agencies.

That’s exactly what the drug czar has traditionally done.

Deep in the Politico story, we learn of one high-profile figure who's working with Conway:

Among the people working on the public education campaign that Trump promised is Andrew Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani’s 32-year-old son, who is a White House public liaison and has no background in drug policy, multiple administration sources told POLITICO.

Okay, maybe it's unfair to mock young Andrew for his antics at his father's first mayoral inaugural, when he was not quite eight years old.



But what has he done since then? A few years later, he developed an interest in golf, and he was on Duke University's golf team for a couple of years. But then he was removed from the team -- and in 2008 he sued:

Andrew Giuliani, a senior and former member of the men's golf team, is suing the University and his former head coach for allegedly illegally terminating his athletic eligibility....

The suit alleges that Giuliani, son of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, was wrongfully suspended from the golf team without warning. [Head coach O.D.] Vincent had cited several events that resulted in Giuliani's suspension, including breaking a club, "gunning" the engine of his car, throwing an apple at former teammate Brian Kim's face and being disrespectful to a trainer, according to the filing.

The suit was filed after Andrew's mother, Donna Hanover, "attempt[ed] to threaten and influence Duke University into placing Andrew Giuliani back onto the Duke University Men’s Golf Team,” according to a court filing. Andrew and his lawyers had claimed that there was “a bizarre Lord of the Flies scheme” to keep him off the team. A U.S. magistrate recommended dismissal of the lawsuit in 2009, and a federal judge dismissed it a year later.

Meanwhile, Andrew pursued a professional golf career and appeared on a golf reality show called Big Break. Almost immediately, a golf blog noted that he seemed to be "rubbing some of his competitors the wrong way (and we’re only 3 shows deep)." He wrote a very earnest essay for GolfChannel.com in which he quoted Theodore Roosevelt's "In the Arena" speech:

Before I went to bed, I went through the two holes in my mind one final time. Before I went to sleep, I read part of President Theodore Roosevelt’s speech to the Paris Sorbonne, which I believe is still one of the best statements ever made.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Time for us to turn this competition around, right now!

After that, the public record of Andrew Giuliani thins significantly. There's a record of one tour appearance in 2011, then, in 2014, Westchester magazine told us that Andrew "currently competes on the mini-tours." For the uninitiated, let me quote a Golf magazine article, which compares the mini-tours to the humblest levels of minor league baseball:

... mini-tours -- while unaffiliated with the PGA Tour -- are Single-A. Rookie ball. It's the lowest professional level in the sport. Mini-tours are about progression, not sustenance. The goal is escape -- ASAP.

Okay, fine -- Andrew gave pro golf a shot and didn't make it. No shame in that -- but in what way does this prepare him to be a key player in national drug policy?

Well, he has been affiliated with the White House since last March.

President Donald Trump has brought on Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to work in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, two sources familiar with the hire told POLITICO.

And what were his duties?

In his new post, Andrew Giuliani ... helped organize the Patriots' upcoming visit to the White House after their come-from-behind Super Bowl victory, and also assisted First Lady Melania Trump’s staff during Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress last week.

Remember, Trump only hires the best people.

IN ATTACKING THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION, ARE REPUBLICANS MAKING A CATEGORY ERROR?

Republicans backed the release of the Devin Nunes memo even though they knew, or should have known, that its most dramatic claims would be swiftly debunked. That's happening now:

Republican leaders are acknowledging that the FBI disclosed the political origins of a private dossier the bureau cited in an application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, undermining a controversial GOP memo released Friday....

“Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,” the memo alleged.

But in an appearance on "Fox & Friends," Nunes was asked about reports over the weekend that the FBI application did refer to a political entity connected to the dossier. It is unclear precisely what language the application might have used.

Nunes conceded that a "footnote" to that effect was included in the application....

They're counting on the most rabid members of their base to tune out any information that contradicts the GOP narrative, even if the information is on Fox, because the plan is to fill the right-wing press with story after story, pundit monologue after pundit monologue, describing the Russia probe as an unspeakable evil. They assume that will work. And the most loyal Republicans will undoubtedly take the bait.

But this standard election-year tactic of the GOP worked better in the past, when the good-versus-evil narrative also resonated with right-wing and right-centrist voters who were only moderately loyal to the GOP. Past narratives worked better because they tapped into visceral fears and prejudices shared by less-devoted Republican voters. I think Republicans believe this will work the same way, but I'm not sure they're right.

I'm thinking about the ACORN and "Ground Zero mosque" narratives in the run-up to the 2010 midterms. The ACORN narrative tapped into a widespread belief among even less-loyal right and right-centrist voters that black people are devious and shifty. The "Ground Zero mosque" narrative tapped into those voters' fears of another 9/11, and of Muslims in general. Add in anti-Obamacare anger -- even moderately rabid righties and right-centrists fear "socialism" -- and it's no surprise that the propaganda worked. The right-wing narrative drowned out rebuttals from left and center media sources because the right was tapping into deep emotions.

In 2014, right-wing propaganda played on fears of Ebola. Again, there was a counternarrative from the left and center, but it's unsurprising that the right's messaging had power -- the fear being stoked concerned Ebola, a terrifying disease (from Africa!).

What visceral fear is the right's current narrative tapping into? Rabidly loyal Republicans will swallow anything Fox News dishes out, but less-loyal right-leaning voters have been conditioned over the years to trust law enforcement. Sure, they've also been trained to hate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and "elitists" generally. But ACORN demagoguery made them fear a government takeover by Those People. "Ground Zero mosque" demagoguery made them fear an invasion by Christian- and Jew-hating terrorists. Ebola demagoguery made them fear an epidemic of horrible deaths.

The current demagoguery makes them fear ... being subject to a FISA warrant? I'm not sure that's going to work on anyone but the most zealous GOP voters. It's just not frightening enough. GOP propagandists will have to find a new narrative to carry that wave of voters along. I don't think this one will work. I don't think the fears it engenders are enough to drown out the debunkings.

HOW MANY RIGHT-WINGERS WILL BLAME THE STOCK MARKET CRASH ON THE DEEP STATE AND ANTI-TRUMP "ELITISTS"?

The Dow dropped nearly 1200 points today, continuing a recent selloff. I made a prediction:

The deplorables will be told that the elites and the deep state see rising poll numbers for Trump and the GOP and want to stop Trump by any means necessary, so they're deliberately crashing the stock market. This theory will be seen as highly credible.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) February 5, 2018

I don't see much of that yet at, say, Breitbart, even in the comments (most commenters are just shrugging this off as a correction). But Alex Jones is entirely predictable:

pic.twitter.com/a8aLGBEeoi

— N. Myers (@CheesersDurden) February 5, 2018

From Infowars:

The Dow Jones suffered a historic -1600 point drop on Monday, following losses that started last week.

It’s worth noting that the market moguls, those with the power to influence the economy on demand, didn’t want Trump as president because they were making money off Obamacare amongst other things, which is evident in the fact that over 60 of them backed Hillary Clinton.

... the central banks have the power to destroy the stock market at will. Is this economic warfare being launched against the president in retaliation against the FISA memo?

If this is just a correction, I think most of the deplorables will continue to assume that the #MAGA God Emperor will right the ship for them in the long run, because he loves them so much. But if the markets go into a long-term funk, expect what Jones is saying now to be conventional wisdom in rural Pennsylvania diners.

THIS IS WHAT THE GOP HAS INSTEAD OF A PLATFORM

We've been told many times by Very Serious People that the Democratic Party can't possibly win elections until it tells the American public what it stands for -- opposing Donald Trump just isn't enough. That's odd, because the Republican Party seems to be abandoning issues altogether (apart from patting itself on the back for the tax cut), and now appears to be headed into 2018 with a six-word platform: Booga booga! Clinton ... Obama ... deep state!

First, Republican hacks Fred Siegel and Mark Epstein published this at City Journal, which positions itself as a sober and scholarly publication, though the item in question reads as if it wandered over from the American Thinker:

The Nunes Memo: Just an Opening Act

Landmines left behind by the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign might soon start detonating—on Democrats.

The publication yesterday by the House Intelligence Committee, under the leadership of chairman Devin Nunes, of a four-page summary memo regarding FBI surveillance of a Trump campaign advisor in 2016 is the long-awaited opening act of an extended drama about the Obama administration’s abuse of power—which, when all is revealed, might yet outdo that of the Nixon administration.

Obama concealed his sharp-edged, Chicago-style machine politics under the rhetorical cover of progressivism. He was protected by a press corps that first enlisted in his administration and then fought to stop Donald Trump. But now that Obama is out of office, his ability to intimidate is much diminished....

Obama isn’t directly mentioned in the memo. But he’s nonetheless implicated through his appointees’ apparent efforts to clear Hillary Clinton in her State Department email scandal while undermining her opponent, Trump, through the veneer of legality provided by FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Security Act) warrants....

Oh, so this going to be "an extended drama"? And its villains are Barack Obama and the Clintons?

That was Saturday. Yesterday this appeared at Axios:

"The memo" — which pitted the Justice Department against the White House and brought ugly partisan sniping into stark relief — is only the beginning. Republican sources close to Devin Nunes tell me he's assured them there's much more to come.

... Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing."

... A Republican member briefed on Nunes' investigations told me: "There are several areas of concern where federal agencies used government resources to try to create a narrative and influence the election. Some have suggested coordination with Hillary Clinton operatives, [Sidney] Blumenthal and [Cody] Shearer, to back up the false narrative."

And this morning at the Washington Examiner, Byron York published this:

Dossier author Steele wrote another anti-Trump memo; was fed info by Clinton-connected contact, Obama State Department

A newly released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier, wrote an additional memo on the subject of Donald Trump and Russia that was not among those published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

The newly released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.

According to the referral, Steele wrote the additional memo based on anti-Trump information that originated with a foreign source. In a convoluted scheme outlined in the referral, the foreign source gave the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele. Steele wrote a report based on the information, but the redacted version of the referral does not say what Steele did with the report after that.

Published accounts in the Guardian and the Washington Post have indicated that Clinton associate Cody Shearer was in contact with Steele about anti-Trump research, and Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer was a connection between Steele and the State Department during the 2016 campaign.

Shearer is the brother of the late wife of Strobe Talbott, an Oxford friend of Bill Clinton who became a deputy secretary of state during the Clinton presidency. So history's three greatest monsters -- Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton -- are now the real villains of Russiagate.

Are the Republicans planning to ride this horse all the way to November? Is this the sum total of their message for 2018? Or is this just an effort to goose fundraising ahead of the 2018 midterms? (It's being reported that many vulnerable House Republicans are being out-fundraised by their Democratic opponents.)

I can't believe even Republicans are so blinkered that they believe all this will rally anyone except Fox News diehards. But given the makeup of most congressional districts, maybe that's all they think they need to beat back a strong Democratic challenge.

In any case, spare me the lectures about the Democrats' lack of a "positive message." This is the Republicans' message -- and it's not positive, or a message about governing at all.

THIS IS WHAT NEWS COVERAGE WILL LOOK LIKE IF DEMOCRATS GAIN MORE POWER IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS

Here's a headline at The Washington Post right now:



The story's lead paragraph:

For those who think California politics is on the far-left fringe of the national spectrum, stand by. The next election season, already well underway here, will showcase a younger generation of Democrats that is more liberal and personally invested in standing up to President Trump’s Washington than those leaving office.

The key terms here are "far left" and "fringe." So what far-left, fringe-y policies are we talking about?

The prescription here for Democrats in a state where few — if any — will need to moderate their positions for the general election is simple. “You go left,” said Karen Skelton, a Democratic consultant here.

That means staking out the most liberal stance on issues such as single-payer health care in California....

Candidates will be forced to defend California’s “sanctuary state” status on immigration and push investment in the solar power and electric car industries to reach strict environmental goals. They also will have to address a sexual harassment scandal that, in Democratic consultant Bill Carrick’s description, “hangs like a black cloud” over a State Capitol where two Democratic lawmakers have resigned and another has been suspended.

So single-payer, a model adopted by countries around the world, and a signature issue of Bernie Sanders, who's one of America's most popular politicians? Sanctuary for undocumented immigrants not subject to federal warrants, a policy in place in cities all over America? Solar power and electric cars? Fighting sexual harassment?

This is "far left"? This is "fringe"?

I want to compare this with how the Post uses the term "far right." Generally speaking, the term is used for neo-Nazis and white nationalists.



This is what mainstream coverage will be like if Democrats manage to gain more power across the country, especially in Washington, over the next few years. The press often sours on Republicans (George W. Bush in his second term, Donald Trump now, governors such as Chris Christie and Sam Brownback) -- but the press doesn't want Democrats to govern as Democrats. The press would really prefer Republicans who talk moderation, even insincerely (the press would much rather have President John Kasich than any of the best-known Democratic contenders), but if a Democrat has to win, he or she should govern from the center or right-center, avoid progressive policy proposals, and generally not frighten the horses. Corporatism is better than liberalism (let's not even talk about socialism, even of the Euro variety).

Democrats may get favorable coverage on the way to winning big victories in 2018 and 2020, but they'll get terrible press as soon as they try to move the country left. Be ready for that.

HOW MUCH DO ORDINARY AMERICANS CARE ABOUT THE RULE OF LAW?

Was the release of the Nunes memo a success for Republicans? Some people think so.

Nobody was impressed by the substance of Nunes’s work, but Operation Muddy The Waters worked like a charm on mainstream news sites. pic.twitter.com/mVl7likoKd

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 3, 2018

Judging strictly by the print coverage of The Memo, I'd say it was very possibly a doubt-sowing success for Trump and Nunes. Very little of the coverage evaluates the strength of the memo; treats it as a "Republicans say/Democrats say." pic.twitter.com/ASjrMpIIsq

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 3, 2018

But I have a hunch that this story -- which is completely unrelated -- says a lot about how ordinary Americans think:

A distraught father who lunged at disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar in a court proceeding Friday seems to have a lot of support from the public.

As of early Saturday, more than 700 donors had pledged a total of more than $23,000 to help Randall Margraves, whose daughters were among Nassar's molestation victims.

Co-worker Aaron Pangborn said he set up the GoFundMe page to help Margraves with any potential legal fees resulting from Friday's courtroom incident....

“As father of 2 girls, the video made me cry ... that you were stopped before you reached him,” supporter Robert Wykoski wrote. “I would do the same.”

Margraves leaped at Nassar on Friday after listening to two of his daughters deliver victim-impact statements....

He requested five minutes alone with the “demon,” then used an expeltive to describe Nassar. When the judge said no, he asked for one minute. When she declined again, he ran at Nassar, but court officers tackled him almost immediately and arrested him....

Margraves wanted the right to inflict physical harm on Nassar, and quite a few people are fine with that. I'd like to see the results of a poll asking whether his request should have been granted. I don't think this would have received majority backing, but I'm guessing that support would be fairly high, particularly among men.

How much do ordinary Americans really care about the rule of law? The arguments both sides are making with regard to the Nunes memo assume support for proper procedure and due process. But to what extent do ordinary Americans believe in proper pocedure. Do they care about it in this case? Or do they regard proper procedure as a complex, arcane matter that only elitists can master?

The right hasn't put much effort into trying to make Carter Page a sympathetic person. People who are very interested in politics (across the ideological spectrum) know who he is and have opinions about him, but do average Americans? And haven't Democrats and non-conservative journalists established that Page is hanging out with Russians in a suspicious way? (This morning we learn from Time that Page wrote a letter to an academic publisher in 2013 claiming to be "an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit.") So apart from pro-Trump zealots, how many ordinary Americans really care if he's being spied on, regardless of whether the spies dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's?

On the other hand, do ordinary Americans care about the outrageous conduct of Nunes and the rest of the right? Do they care that the FBI and intelligence community are being attacked? An Axios/Survey Monkey poll released this weekend suggests that non-Republicans have generally favorable opinions of the FBI, but a lot of respondents seem to have no opinion.



i think this is all being argued on ground that matters to well-informed partisans, but not to the rest of America. I don't think the past week's events will change many minds -- either way.

THE NEW YORK TIMES FINDS SOMEONE TO BLAME #MEMOGATE ON LIBERALS, BECAUSE OF COURSE IT DOES

Except in the epistemically closed bunker of the Fox News right -- which now clearly includes the entire House Republican caucus -- the release of the Devin Nunes memo is considered to be a massive dud. The decison to write, promote, and declassify the memo should subject Republicans to a massive shaming, and to some extent that's happening.

But trust The New York Times to find someone who'll conclude that the entire affair is the fault of ... yes, liberals. And, alas, it's someone worthy of respect -- Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent who worked in counterintelligence and who recently published an excellent post at Just Security explaining, among other things, just how difficult it would be to obtain and sustain a FISA warrant with flimsy or ideologically distorted documentation. But today in the Times, Rangappa gives us this:

Thank Progressives for the Nunes Memo

Her reasons?

The memo is a shame. But those on the left denouncing its release should realize that it was progressive and privacy advocates over the past several decades who laid the groundwork for the Nunes memo — not Republicans. That’s because the progressive narrative has focused on an assumption of bad faith on the part of the people who participate in the FISA process, not the process itself.

... the prevailing narrative of FISA hasn’t been just that it’s an imperfect system, but that those acting within it routinely lie to the court and that judges can’t be trusted to do their job.

The right has seized on the claim, made in the Nunes memo, that F.B.I. and Justice Department officials hoodwinked the FISA court with false evidence and that the federal judge approving it didn’t bother to dig deeper. In doing so, it has simply co-opted the left’s position on FISA: Don’t bother to have faith in the process, because the rule of law has no meaning even to those who are sworn to uphold it.

Rangappa respects the system, so it's understable if she disagrees with people on both the left and the right who think the system is corrupt.

But that doesn't mean that the left is responsible for the right's framing of this issue. The right will grasp at any straw and use any slim pretext to attack its enemies generally, and Trump's enemies in particular. A year ago, Devin Nunes and the rest of the Fox News right were pursuing a phony "unmasking" scandal, in which it was argued that Obama administration officials improperly learned the identities of Americans who'd appeared in surveillance reports on foreigners. The right didn't pick that up from left-wing critics of the intelligence community -- conservatives thought that one up all by themselves. Nor did the "Uranium One" pseudo-scandal originate on the left -- that came from an anti-Clinton book written by a Breitbartnik who'd been financed by Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It's safe to assume that if there'd never been a left-wing critique of the FISA approval process, right-wingers would have figured out how to concoct one all by themselves.

And even if you believe that the left gave Nunes and his defenders dangerous ideas, should liberals walk on tiptoe to avoid riling up the right? Is it the fault of Blacks Lives Matter and other defenders of black civil rights that conservatives repurposed their rhetoric as "Blue Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" -- or, worse, as white nationalism? Should the LGBT community stop pursuing rights because homophobes then use a rights framework to defend anti-gay cake bakers or anti-LGBT conscience clauses for medical professionals? Is every bit of right-wing rhetoric that boils down to "I'm rubber, you're glue" the left's fault?

If Rangappa thinks that left-wing critics of the FISA process are as wrongheaded as right-wing critics, I understand. But let's not blame the left for what the right does. The right will do dangerous, malicious things with or without a template from the other side.

THE NUNES MEMO AND THE RIGHT'S LONG CAMPAIGN TO DECLARE ITS CRITICS INVALID BY DEFINITION

In November 1981, President Reagan's controversial interior secretary, James Watt, said this:

I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans.

Over the past few decades, that's been a subtext -- and sometimes the main text -- of a great deal of conservative argumentation. Liberals and Democrats simply aren't American. They aren't trustworthy. Nothing they say is worth acknowledging unless it's being corroborated by a Republican.

By now, conservatives regard even many Republicans as beyond the pale. The opinions of "RINOs" are also invalid by definition. So are the opinions of global critics of the American right.

That's the gist of the argument in the Nunes memo: The renewal of a FISA warrant for Carter Page was based on information from the Christopher Steele dossier. The dossier was financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, therefore it's invalid. Steele himself didn't like Trump, therefore what he reported is invalid.

Here's a portion of the memo:



You can hate Democrats if you like, but why would Democrats pay an intelligence professional large amounts of money for lies? If they wanted to attack Trump with falsehoods, they could just make them up. They wanted factual information that was detrimental to Trump. Similarly, why would Steele just make up dirt for his clients? He had a professional reputation to uphold. Both sides had a vested interest in obtaining information that was accurate.

Steele was a widely regarded spy. The FBI thought he was trustworthy. There's every reason to believe that the FISA warrant renewal was based on more than the Steele dossier (though Nunes takes great pains to conceal that fact), but there's also good reason to believe that Steele obtained real dirt.

But to Republicans, it's all invalid because it's fruit of the poison tree: the Democratic Party, which is a poison tree by definition.

There's also this in the memo:



What the memo refers to as Steele's "bias" might just be Steele's attitude toward Trump after learning all the skeezy things he'd learned about Trump in the course of his investigations. If you're spying on Joe Blow and your espionage uncovers the fact that Blow is a bad person, does learning about Blow's deparavity mean you have bias against Blow and should no longer stay on the Blow case? That's not a standard I'd like applied to law enforcement officers investigating serial killers, rapists, terrorists, pedophiles, child pornographers, industrial polluters, Ponzi-scheme operators....

But to Nunes and the rest of the right, opposition to Trump invalidates everything the opponent says. It's "liberals and Americans" all over again.

MORE TRUTH DECAY FROM FOX AND KELLYANNE CONWAY

Fox News tells us:

Poll: 55% say @POTUS legislative agenda is successful. pic.twitter.com/MXgJ3pUblK

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 2, 2018

Kellyanne Conway follows up:

#poll: in just one month, the numbers flipped. .@POTUS on the rise.

Success is the best revenge. https://t.co/tW7X4Zye5n

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 2, 2018

But the Monmouth poll doesn't say that 55% of respondents believe Trump's "legislative agenda is successful." The poll says that 55% of respondents believe Trump has been at least somewhat successful "at getting Congress to pass his legislative agenda."

And only 7% of respondents say he's been "very successful" -- 48% believe he's been only "somewhat successful."



They lie about everything.

HEY JOHN KELLY, THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

Remember when newly appointed chief of staff John Kelly was said to be bringing order to a chaotic White House by, among other things, limiting President Trump's exposure to unreliable media reports?

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s ongoing efforts to cut off President Trump’s supply of nonsense now include blunting the influence of Omarosa Manigault, the former Apprentice star and current White House advisor. The Daily Beast reports that Manigault has been one of the worst offenders in “triggering” Trump by passing on unvetted news articles that enrage the president.

The New York Times told us that because Trump didn't know how to use a Web browser, he

was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.

Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.

The printouts are gone, Bannon and Omarosa are gone -- but if this Washington Post story is to be believed, the crazy doesn't need to reach Trump via Breitbart printouts because it can come in via Republican members of Congress in good standing:

President Trump was only vaguely aware of a controversial, classified memo about the FBI’s Russia investigation when two House conservatives brought it to his attention in a Jan. 18 phone call.

The conversation piqued Trump’s interest.

Over the next two weeks, according to interviews with eight senior administration officials and other advisers to the president, he tuned in to cable television segments about the memo. He talked to friends and advisers about it. And, before he had even read it, Trump became absolutely convinced of one thing: The memo needed to come out.

“He was listening to a number of members of Congress talk about how concerned they are and what they read. It’s not just a couple of us,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), one of the House conservatives who spoke with Trump on the Jan. 18 call....

The other congressman on that initial call was Jim Jordan of Ohio.

The Daily Beast has a different origin story:

According to three sources with knowledge of their conversations, Trump has been in regular contact with Hannity over the phone in recent weeks, as the Fox News primetime star and Trump ally has encouraged the prompt release of a controversial four page memo crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. Hannity has gone to the wall to push for the public release of the memo, which the Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), authorized this week in a party-line vote despite the classified information therein.

Sources say Hannity’s persistent advocacy reinforced Trump’s already growing determination to get that memo into the public realm—despite huge potential fallout within the law enforcement and intelligence arms of his own administration.

The Beast story and the Post story aren't contradictory. The Beast says that Hannity encouraged Trump's "already growing determination" to release the memo. The Post story says that the Meadows-Jordan call inspired Trump to focus on cable-news segments about the memo -- presumably including segments from Hannity's show.

Kelly has acknowledged in multiple media reports that he's never tried to limit Trump's phone calls to friends outside the government, nor has he tried to curtail Trump's marathon TV-watching. And Kelly favors the release of the memo. But releasing the memo is nuts, and the nuttiness may have reached the White House through the "respectable" channel of a phone call from two congressmen.

That's the problem. The crazy isn't just in fringe media publications. Washington Republicans are crazy. The rot is pervasive.

DON'T WORRY, THEY'LL HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TEED UP

Oh, dear -- if Axios's Jonathan Swan is right, I guess it's not worse than Watergate after all:

Inside the Trump administration, sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be.

What we're hearing: There is much more skepticism inside the administration than has been previously reported about the value of releasing the memo, according to sources familiar with the administration discussions.

... Trump still wants to release the memo. But there are a number of people in the White House who are fairly underwhelmed, and there's internal anxiety about whether it's worth angering the FBI director and intelligence community by releasing this information.

I know that on some level Trump would like all of this to go away, but I think a part of him gets off on living this close to the edge. I think to some extent he likes the fact that firing Comey gave him Mueller, because hating Mueller and dreaming of beating Mueller add purpose to his life. He's still president and you're not. He hasn't been impeached. How long can he keep this up? And it'll be so great when he's vindicated, just you wait. So why not release the memo, piss off the FBI director, and get himself in more trouble? You think he can't skate after that? He thinks he can!

And as for the less-than-earth-shattering nature of the memo: For the rest of the right, it's just a mini-series that's having its special two-part final episode this week. If the memo falls flat, Fox and Breitbart and the rest will instantly pivot to some other outrage. What's Hillary up to? Isn't there a traitorous college professor out there somewhere? They'll find something. I'm sure they've already identified it and teed it up.

Shed no tears for these guys. They'll be fine.

SCARY THOUGHT

CNN reports that Christopher Wray has the White House worried:

Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN.

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Wray's stance is "raising hell," one source familiar with the matter said.

Fran Townshend, a homeland security advisor to President George W. Bush who now works for CBS, says Wray may rebut the Nunes memo:

FBI director Christopher Wray is prepared to issue a rebuttal if the White House releases Rep. Devin Nunes's classified memo alleging inappropriate surveillance of the Trump campaign by the FBI and Justice Department, according to CBS News senior national security analyst Fran Townsend. The FBI issued a statement Wednesday that they have "grave concerns" about the memo and the "material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy."

I don't believe Wray will quit, and the fact that White House sources are expressing concern about his departure may mean that someone will try to talk the president out of firing Wray if Wray issues a public rebuke after the memo's release. However, Trump's not going to be happy. Wray's clearly not on his team.

So what happens if Wray is gone soon, voluntarily or otherwise? I asked that question on Twitter.

So who's Trump going to pick to replace Christopher Wray?

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) February 1, 2018

Here's one answer I received:

Gowdy

— mjohnso27 (@mjohnso27) February 1, 2018

Probably. Yikes.


****

UPDATE, via djchefron in comments:

Per @PeteWilliamsNBC #ChrisWray has no intention of quitting if memo is released over his objections

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 1, 2018

JUSTICE OBSTRUCTORS' LIVES MATTER

I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but the denunciations of federal law enforcement by President Trump and his defneders sound a lot like what Black Lives Matter and its supporters say about systemic corruption in local law enforcement. Of course, the Trumpers believe it's completely unacceptable to criticize your local police department -- if you do that, you hate America and you're inciting riots, even when you're telling the truth. The Trumpers aren't telling the truth, but they reserve the right to say whatever they want about law enforcement at the national level.

Here's a clip of Fox's Lou Dobbs talking to Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch. The clip is being promoted by Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.



Some excerpts:

FARRELL: Let me boil it down real simple: The FBI is threatening the president of the United States.

DOBBS: How so?

FARRELL: ... They've tried to put him in a corner and say, "Hey, look, we we really don’t want you revealing all the criminality that's going on in the organization....

They try to intimidate in order to cover up for their criminality....

DOBBS: ... The FBI has been a place where truth goes to die, and where -- they're used primarily to cover up. "It's under FBI investigation, we can't answer your questions, we'll never see you again, thank you very much."

FARRELL: And so these political operators are threatening the president of the United States. They're betraying their oath to the Constitution. They are so defensive and so reactive trying to cover up for the big FBI machine, which ... frankly has a long history of all sorts of different flavors of corruption.

If two BLM leaders said this about local cops trying to intimidate a progressive mayor or city council member, most of Fox would be up in arms. The critics wiould be accused of putting targets on cops' backs, even if everything they said was true. Dobbs and Farrell are liars, but this is okay, I guess, according to the right, because corrupt White House officials' lives matter.