I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT ANONYMOUS OP-ED WAS SUPPOSED TO ACCOMPLISH, BUT IT FAILED

Here's how last week's unsigned New York Times op-ed is being covered now.

Scott Simon on NPR Saturday:

I don't like anonymous bylines. You can't ask questions of an anonymous speaker or writer, try to poke holes in their story, or get them to prove what they say. You can't guess what they hope to gain by writing or saying what they do, whether it's to advance an idea, promote a book or just promote themselves....

Anonymous charges have an ugly history in America, from real witch hunts in the American colonies to the McCarthy era....

What does a self-described "senior official in the Trump administration" have to lose by speaking publicly? Their job?

Within hours of being fired, perhaps by tweet, the suddenly former senior official would be "punished" with a taxing round of media interviews, well-paid speeches and a book contract.

Shervin Malekzadeh at the HuffPost yesterday:

The notion that the essay published on Wednesday counts as an act of bravery, that this self-designated member of the resistance can barely conceal his or her desire to be acknowledged as a servant of the commonweal, while plainly ignoring the real abuses of the administration, is too much to bear. The author fails to mention the nearly 500 migrant children still separated from their parents, the constant race-baiting by the president, or his ceaseless demonization of a free press, but happily celebrates “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” Our country for 30 pieces of silver.

Mediaite yesterday:

On Sunday, former Trump campaign director Michael Caputo claimed he knows who the author of the mysterious New York Times op-ed is and insisted the person behind the prose is a woman.

CNN host Fredricka Whitfield started the conversation by quizzing Caputo about his claim that he has figured it out.

“So you feel like you’ve figured out who the person is, do you believe the White House has figured it out?” Whitfield asked.

Caputo replied he feels like the White House is getting close.

“Well, how come you know and they don’t?” Whitfield pressed further.

“They’re getting there,” Caputo insisted.

That's how we're discussing the op-ed: We're debating the appropriateness of anonymity, we're critiquing the author's policy priorities -- and, mostly, we're spending a lot of time trying to guess the author's identity.

We're devoting a lot more time to discussing the nature of the op-ed and its author than we are to discussing what the op-ed says about the president and his administration. Why was it written? Wasn't it written to tell us that our government is badly damaged? To warn us that the president, left to his own devices, would do very frightening things?

We're not having that conversation. We were having that conversation when the first excerpts from Bob Woodward's book appeared, and for a while the contents of the op-ed played into that discussion. But now we just want to know: Who's the sneak? Will the sneak get caught? Why is the sneak a sneak? Why isn't the sneak more of a resister?

It was a clever stunt made to draw attention to serious problems that threaten our country, but we seem to be more interested in the stunt than the threat.

SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT DeSANTIS AND HOROWITZ ARE TYPICAL CONSERVATIVE WHITE AMERICANS

In a better country, this would matter on Election Day. It won't.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a gubernatorial nominee who recently was accused of using racially tinged language, spoke four times at conferences organized by a conservative activist who has said that African Americans owe their freedom to white people and that the country’s “only serious race war” is against whites.

DeSantis, elected to represent north-central Florida in 2012, appeared at the David Horowitz Freedom Center conferences in Palm Beach, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017, said Michael Finch, president of the organization.

... Horowitz has a record of inflammatory comments on social media....

[A] recent Horowitz tweet said: “Black Africans enslaved black Africans. America freed them sacrificing 350k mainly white Union lives. American blacks are richer, more privileged, freer than blacks anywhere in the world, including all black run countries.”

In yet another, he shared a Fox News story about a Dallas man arrested after reportedly traveling to Washington to kill “all white police” at the White House. “Meanwhile, the country’s only serious race war — against whites — continues,” Horowitz wrote.

Horowitz believes that there's a race war against whites in America? How different is this from what most white Americans believe?

This is from 2017:

A majority of whites say discrimination against them exists in America today, according to a poll released Tuesday from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health....

More than half of whites — 55 percent — surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people in America today....

Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it.

Also:

A Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted in May 2017 found that “[m]ore than half (52 percent) of white working-class Americans believe discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” Among working-class Americans aged 65 and older, nearly 6 in 10 held that view.

And:

In September 2016, Quinnipiac University [asked] respondents how concerned the were about “so-called ‘reverse racism’, or discrimination against white people” impacting their lives.

About 4 in 10 Americans said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about that happening — including almost two-thirds of Trump voters.

In those surveys, whites and conservatives acknowledged that non-whites face discrimination. But there's this, from 2011:

Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School....

Both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years, according to the study. However, whites believe that anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

The paper cited is "Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing" by Samuel Sommers and Michael I. Norton (Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 2011).

And this, from 2013:

A POLL RELEASED Wednesday by Rasmussen found African-Americans are more likely to be viewed as racist than whites.

Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said "most black Americans" are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist.

In this poll, right-wingers tip the balance:

Among conservative Americans, 49% consider most blacks racist, and only 12% see most whites that way.

It's inaccurate to call David Horowitz an extremist because his beliefs aren't extreme in America -- they're slightly to the right of what's believed by most white Americans and conservatives (but I repeat myself). That's why, as the DeSantis story notes, "Guest speakers at [Horowitz] conferences over the past five years have included Republican members of Congress, former governors Rick Perry of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, [and] young conservative activists James O’Keefe and Ben Shapiro" -- as well as "right-wing European politicians Nigel Farage and Geert Wilders."

If you're looking for a bright line between mainstream conservatism -- or even mainstream American whiteness -- and Farage/Wilders-style white nationalism, you'll look in vain, because there isn't one, and it disappeared long before Donald Trump decided to run for office.

JUST SAYIN'

Ted Cruz at a rally yesterday in Humble, TX told the crowd @BetoORourke would be bad because "they want us to be just like California...right down to tofu and silicone and dyed hair....not on our watch.” Good thing he's working on that likability problem. pic.twitter.com/Bm2uTsn8xR

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) September 9, 2018

Just sayin'.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A DICTATOR-LOVING WACKALOON TO BE A REPUBLICAN, BUT IT HELPS

A Virginia state senator is spreading bizarre conspiracy theories on behalf of the Assad government.

Fresh off a sit-down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black turned up on an Arab TV channel last week making an extraordinary claim about one of the United States’ closest allies.

Black said Britain’s MI6 intelligence service was planning a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which it would then blame on Assad....

Black (R-Loudoun) said later that he meant the British were planning not to carry out an attack themselves, but to either direct rebels to do so or stage a phony attack, with actors posing as victims.

Black also said some chemical attacks previously reported to have occurred in Syria were British fakes, pulled off with help from volunteer first responders known as White Helmets.

“From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Black said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post. “And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.”

The meeting with Assad that preceded these statements was Black's second -- he also met with Syrian dictator in 2016. Prior to that, in 2014, he wrote a letter to Assad calling him “heroic” and praising him and Syria's military for “extraordinary gallantry in the war against terrorists.”

Black is in the Virginia state senate because he beat his 2016 Democratic opponent -- Jill McCabe, wife of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, one of President Trump's bêtes noires. During the campaign, Black posted an insulting tweet about McCabe that he subsequently deleted under pressure:

Black’s tweet was a response to his opponent, Jill McCabe (D), labeling him a career politician. The tweet included an image that listed accomplishments by both candidates. On one side, Black listed his accomplishments: senator, delegate, accountant, juris doctor, Marine major, Army colonel, home builder, herpetologist, factory manager, career prosecutor, construction engineer, pilot and flight instructor, library board member, father of three and grandfather of 14.

On the other side, he listed McCabe’s: doctor and mother. The difference was “experience,” he tweeted.

McCabe is a pediatric surgeon.

In addition, Black tried to smear both McCabe and Planned Parenthood:

Black's campaign tweeted an image appearing to show a Planned Parenthood survey indicating McCabe's support for late-term abortions. It also tweeted that McCabe "supports selling late term abortions for bigger body parts." The campaign then tweeted in August that such parts "are more profitable." McCabe's campaign denied any support for late-term abortions but said that "she does understand that there are unfortunately circumstances where a pregnancy proceeding to full-term is not in the best health interest of either a mother, or child." The fact-checking organization PolitiFact gave Black's statements a "Pants on Fire" rating.

Black is notorious in Virginia for having enclosed pink plastic fetuses in letters he sent to legislators regarding an abortion bill.

Also:

In 1998, he tried to pass a law to require doctors give anaesthetic to foetuses before late-term abortions and another that "tried to effectively ban gay people from adopting children in Virginia".... In late 2000, in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, Black proposed legislation that would require students to address their teachers as "Ma'am", "Sir", "Mr.", "Miss" or "Mrs."...

... during the 2001 session, Black opposed a bill that would allow the "morning-after pill" to be dispensed at pharmacies.... "This is a baby pesticide we're looking at. It's a toxic method of eliminating a child," said Black....

In February 2002, Black opposed making marital rape a crime, saying that it was impossible to convict a man "when they're living together, sleeping in the same bed, she's in a nightie, and so forth." ... In late 2002 and early 2003, Black opposed erecting a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son Thomas at the Tredegar Iron Works to commemorate Lincoln's visit to Richmond on April 4, 1865, 10 days before his assassination. Black said, "Putting a statue to [Lincoln] there is sort of like putting the Confederate flag at the Lincoln Memorial." ...

In July 2003, Black proposed legislation that would prevent unmarried and gay couples from applying for low-interest home mortgages, saying that the state was "spending $90 million to subsidize sodomy and adultery..."

Oh, and for good measure, he once desceribed Toni Morrison's Beloved as "moral sewage."

On his recent overseas trip, in addition to meeting with Assad and accusing the British of planning a fake or false-flag chemical attack, he gave an interview to the Russia propaganda network RT. Black frequently appears on RT, and said this about the network last year:

... you listen to RT news and they present very accurate information that is verifiable when you go and you and you actually research it. [...] RT news [...] has been a source of accurate information about NATO's provocations; their military provocations and their aggressive actions towards Russia in Europe. [...] too many Americans have been saying you know what, what we're seeing on RT news seems to be much more factual than what we're seeing on CNN and some of these other broadcast media sources. [...] I hope that RT remains a very robust source of news because I rely on it, and I will tell you millions of Americans have come to rely on RT news.

Black is up for reelection in 2020. It's time to send the reprehensible whack job packing.

ALREADY IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY WHICH WAS WHICH

In The National Interest, Daniel McCarthy offers a rationale for that anonymous New York Times op-ed:

The op-ed is part of a strategy. “Never Trump” Republicans are setting themselves up to claim victory when the Trump GOP loses control of the House of Representatives later this year, a turn that looks almost inevitable.

McCarthy says it isn't going to work:

But it won’t matter because the practical effect of shrinking the Republican Party will be to accelerate the change within it. The same thing happened after the GOP’s crushing defeats at the tail end of the George W. Bush years in 2006 and 2008. Far from emerging chastened and more moderate, ... the GOP that rose from the ashes of the Bush debacle was one in which the House Freedom Caucus was stronger than ever. The party was more populist and aggressively right-wing, as seen first in the Tea Party and then in Trump campaign.

That's plausible. The more extreme Republicans -- the ones in the reddest districts -- will survive. The Republicans who'll be defeated are the slightly more moderate ones in purplish districts.

So does that mean the Never Trumpers will wander forever in the wilderness, or form a third party, or try to join the Democrats?

McCarthy seems to think so, but I don't. He thinks the Never Trumpers are relics, and traitors to True Conservatism -- "as far as the party’s base is concerned, there is nothing conservative or right-wing in the least about global trade agreements, liberalized immigration policies, and nation-building abroad." But the base didn't get worked up about trade agreements during George W. Bush's time in office because for much of his presidency he was Owning The Libs with his wars and his tax cuts. Initially the base embraced the nation-building enthusiastically, because the Iraq War really seemed to Own The Libs.

The only serious problem the conservative base has with the traditional conservatism of the Never Trumpers is on the subject of immigration.

Which is why the Never Trumpers won't have to be gone for long. Before we know it, the GOP will be a fully reconstituted party led by people who Own The Libs, but with less ignorance and less crude bluster than Trump. They can be trade skeptics or free traders -- the base won't care. They can be isolationists or saber-rattlers -- Trump is both -- and the base will be cool with either. They just have to be Trumpian on immigration, if a smidge less tacky (no family separations). I think mainstream conservatives will find a way to intellectualize and then endorse this policy shift.

Our job will be to point out that the new, less bombastic, slicker party (probably led by Tom Cotton or some similar political pro) is still really bad. It will be a party that can function in polite society and that's no longer led by someone who insults political enemies on social media using schoolyard nicknames. The Never Trumpers will be comfortable in it. And it will be godawful for America.

DONALD TRUMP: STILL A SNIVELING COWARD

Gabriel Sherman reports that Ivanka and Jared have accused John Kelly of being responsible for that anonymous New York Times op-ed:

According to three sources, Jared and Ivanka floated a theory on Wednesday that Kelly could be behind the Times op-ed. Under this scenario, the sources said, the op-ed was written by Zachary Fuentes, the deputy chief of staff, at the direction of Kelly. Jared and Ivanka have told people they suspect this because Kelly is the only one with an ego so large as to have convinced himself that he’s saving the country from Trump, which was one of the op-ed’s principal arguments.

Seriously? They think no one else in this White House has a large enough ego to regard himself/herself as America's savior? That's hilarious.

On Wednesday night, Ivanka and Jared laid out for Trump the theory that Fuentes might be the author, an outside adviser with knowledge of the conversation told me.
Trump disagreed with their theory, an outside adviser said.

I disagree, too. Yastreblyansky has been floating the theory that the author was Larry Kudlow, with quite a bit of persuasive evidence. Now I'm reading William Saletan's argument for why the author had to be Jon Huntsman, and I'm finding that convincing.

It's not clear what evidence Javanka offered the president, apart from an assessment of ego size, but I suspect they're accusing him only because, as Sherman notes, they're feuding with him:

Earlier this week, they told Trump they were deeply troubled by the accounts in Woodward’s book and blamed Chief of Staff John Kelly for many of the leaks, an outside adviser close to them told me. “‘He’s destroying your presidency,’” Ivanka told her father, the outside adviser, who was briefed on the conversation, said. Their hunt for the author of the Times op-ed may bring them into the final chapter of their long-running feud with Kelly.

In any case, Trump won't fire or discipline Kelly, according to Sherman, because the president is a hero-worshiping little boy in Kelly's presence, and is also a coward:

Ivanka has been frustrated that her father won’t take action against Kelly, an outside adviser said. She’s told people that Trump still sees Kelly as a “John Wayne figure,” and that Trump is worried that if Kelly is fired, he’ll become even more dangerous as an outside critic.

I know that LBJ gave J. Edgar Hoover free rein because, as he said, "It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." But that was J. Edgar Hoover. He scared more than one president. This is Trump's chief of staff. C'mon, dude -- if you have differences, man up and fire the SOB. You're the goddamn president.

OBAMA GOES OLD SCHOOL -- IS THAT A GOOD THING?

I haven't watch today's Obama speech yet, but what I'm reading about it leaves me with mixed feelings. I like this:

Warning that these are "extraordinary" and "dangerous" times, former President Barack Obama on Friday unleashed his most direct and forceful attack on President Donald Trump and said internal resistance in the administration is not the right way to stop him.

During a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama slammed "crazy stuff" coming out of the Trump White House....

"It should not be a partisan issue to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents. Or to explicitly call on the Attorney General to protect members of our own party from prosecution," Obama said....

And Obama took Republicans in Congress to task for being "utterly unwilling to find the backbone to safeguard the institutions that make our democracy work." Even Republicans "who know better," Obama added, "are still bending over backwards" to protect Trump.

"This is not normal," Obama continued. “How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?"

And I'm pleased that the stated purpose of the speech was to encourage people to turn out in November and vote Democratic.

There was nothing subtle about the speech. Vote, and vote for Democrats, Obama said, several times.

But in that case, was there really any purpose to this?

“Even if you don’t agree with me or Democrats on policy, even if you agree with more libertarian economic views, even if you are an evangelical and the position on social issues is a bridge too far,” Obama said. “I’m here to tell you that you should still be concerned and should still want to see a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government. It should not be Democratic or Republican. It should not be partisan to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents.”

Or this?

The former president said both parties had, at times, been “infected” with the kind of politics he said the nation should abhore. He praised Republicans who in the past had helped expand civil rights and other protections and said neither party “has had a monopoly on wisdom.”

This is precisely what didn't work for Democrats in 2016. Hillary Clinton tried to reach out to moderate Republicans, and those Republicans, even the ones who had doubts about Trump, came home to their party's nominee on Election Day. Nearly all of them are going to do that this year as well, or they're going to stay home.

This message doesn't reach the people at whom it's aimed, while it suggests to some committed progressives that the Democratic Party really isn't very different from the Republican Party.

Libertarians won't vote Democratic. Nor will evangelicals. Lefties who hear that the Democratic Party is a safe choice for these voting blocs are likely to come away thinking that Obama has just confirmed everything Jacobin, Glenn Greenwald, and Chapo Trap House have been saying about Democrats for years.

I know that this has been Obama's message since that convention speech in 2004. I'm not arguing that Obama needs to move sharply to the left. He shouldn't make that move if he's not comfortable with it. (In the speech, he did praise Medicare for All.) I'm saying that he should focus sharply on what the problem is -- the Republican Party -- and on what we need to do immediately to start solving the problem -- electing more Democrats, because Democrats are better than Republicans. Not Democrats are better than Republicans even though Republicans have been good in the past, and Democrats haven't always been so great.

This is not a time for qualifications. This is a time to make the choice clear and obvious. We need to make sure that we get the people who are fed up out to the polls. We're not going to get the votes of people who still aren't sure whether they're disgusted.

THIS IS A GOOD TIME FOR THE SABOTEURS TO TRY TO GET RID OF TRUMP

Two stories dominated the news this week. President Trump's fitness to serve was repeatedly called into question -- in the forthcoming Bob Woodward book, in an anonymous New York Times op-ed, and in stories like this one, from the New York Daily News:

White House officials reached out to a noted Yale University psychiatrist last fall out of concern over President Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior.

Dr. Bandy Lee, who edited the best-selling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” told the Daily News Thursday the staffers contacted her because the President was “scaring” them....

A pair of West Wing representatives contacted her two separate times on the same day because they believed the President was “unraveling.”

The other major story was the confirmation hearing for (barring a miracle) the next Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, a right-wing zealot who is expected to be the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, and what's left of the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance limitations.

The two stories are connected.

Why would staffers who are conservative but upset by the course of the Trump presidency be prepared to have their words go public right now? Maybe they couldn't control the timing of the Woodward book's publication or Dr. Lee's decision to go public, but one rogue staffer chose to submit the op-ed to the Times at this moment, possibly after consulting with other rogue staffers. Why now?

Is it because the rogues fear that the Mueller investigation is about to bring the hammer down on Trump, or that a Democratic House will investigate the hell out of the president and his administration in 2019 and beyond?

Yes, but it's also the case that, as far as establishment Republicans are concerned, Trump's work is done.

The tax cut has been passed. Regulations have been dismantled. And now the fifth wingnut is being installed on the High Court -- despite the many questions Democrats have raised about Kavanaugh this week, he'll get the vote of every Republican senator, and probably three (Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly) or four (Nelson) Democrats. Democrats can search all they want in the documents that are being withheld, but those documents could reveal that Kavanaugh shot someone on Fifth Avenue and Susan Collins would still vote for him.

So as far as mainstream Republicans are concerned, this is the moment when all the good stuff is finally locked in. It's time to prevent the bad stuff -- tariffs (the worst!), oh, and maybe World War III. Kavanaugh's inevitable confirmation was the last piece in the puzzle. So it was time to make a move.

MAYBE WE WERE TOO HASTY ON THAT STEVE BANNON THING (updated)

The Daily Beast has just published Marlow Stern's interview with Steve Bannon. (Please note that no "Twitter mob" has descended on the Beast.) The interview was conducted in Venice during the city's film festival, in which Errol Morris's Bannon documentary, American Dharma, was screened.

On one hand, Stern confirms my fear that Bannon would have bamboozled David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival -- Stern says that Bannon bamboozled Morris:

Despite subjecting Bannon to 18 hours of interviews over three days, Morris mostly cedes the floor to a man whom many have branded a “white nationalist,” granting him a big ol’ platform to preach his controversial doctrine, one that is spreading like wildfire across Europe.

“Did I struggle with the question?” Morris said of whether he should make a film about Bannon. “The answer is yes. If the question is, am I still struggling with it? The answer would be yes.”

Stern, on the other hand, mostly holds his own with Bannon, so it's conceivable that Remnick would have done the same. I'll admit that I'm sorry the festival's audience never got to witness exchanges like these:

...Trump is an “elite” though, right?

No, he’s not at all. He’s… he’s definitely a populist. Always been an outsider.

But he’s a billionaire with a superrich father. The guy inherited tens of millions—maybe more—from his father.

But that doesn’t... it’s not... he’s a guy from Queens.

Have you seen his penthouse apartment in Manhattan? The thing is solid gold, overlooks Central Park, and is worth over $100 million.

Many times.

You don’t think that constitutes “elite”? It’s one of the nicest apartments in Manhattan. It’s a $100 million, three-story, solid-gold penthouse.

It’s a nice crib. But “elite” is not just about wealth, it’s about mind-set. Trump connects with working-class people and lower-middle-class people.

****

Let’s go back to American Dharma for a second. There’s a lot of talk in the film about your mission to take on the “elites,” but Trump’s initial Cabinet was worth what, $15 billion? How do you square that?

Well, first of all, they’re all self-made people.

Elaine Chao and Betsy DeVos are self-made people? They come from family money.

OK, but no, come on, just because they’re successful doesn’t mean they’re part of the American elite.

They’re billionaires!

It doesn’t mean that they’re part of the elite, and it also doesn’t mean that they did not go along 100 percent with Donald Trump’s populist program.

But if they’re billionaires, how does that not make them part of the elite? What makes someone elite?

If you’re self-made. Donald Trump is not part of the American elite. Donald Trump has always been an outsider.

But he’s not self-made.

Donald Trump is totally self-made. He took a small grubstake of his father. His father gave him, what, $100 million? $50 million? $40 million?

Can you imagine Bannon going before a live New York audience and trying to get away with saying that Trump is self-made because his father gave him only "a small grubstake" of $40-100 million? Even upmarket totebaggers would have been howling for his head. Maybe a live audience for a Bannon would have been a good idea.

****

ALSO: Bannon may have insisted to Marlow Stern that Trump is a populist, but The Guardian's Tom McCarthy has been reading Bob Woodward's book and tells us that a few years ago Trump couldn't even pronounce "populist":

Before Donald Trump ran for president, he needed to build his political vocabulary. And so it was in an early meeting with Steve Bannon – in 2010, when Trump was considering a presidential run to unseat Barack Obama – that Trump encountered the concept of populism.

In a scene captured in the journalist Bob Woodward’s new book Fear: Trump in the White House, Bannon told Trump that he (meaning Trump) was for the common man, against crony capitalism and insider deals.

“I love that,” Trump said, according to Woodward’s account. “That’s what I am, a popularist.”

Woodward completes the scene:

“‘No, no,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s populist.’

“‘Yeah, yeah,’ Trump insisted. ‘A popularist.’”

But I guess knowing how to speak standard English is elitist.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT'S PENCE

Even though he denies it, it's tempting to believe that Mike Pence wrote that damn editorial.

Here's Pence saying #Lodestar eight times, going back to 2001. I'm just saying! pic.twitter.com/oWWtngCgpK

— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) September 6, 2018

It's true -- he's said "lodestar" a lot over the years, and the word "lodestar" does show up in the op-ed. But it's a fancy word a lot of people in politics use -- here's an Obama speech in which it appears; here's Dick Cheney using it in an interview. Pence might use it more than most people because it's a meaningful word to Christians -- I found an air-condition contractor in Washington State whose company is called Lodestar. His website explains the name:



Nevertheless, I think it was someone other than Pence because of this passage:

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

There's nothing in this paragraph about a return to "traditional values." If Pence wrote this and decided to include one paragraph of praise, he absolutely would have mentioned pro-religious right policies and (especially) judges.

I think Pence might favorably invoke McCain, but I can't imagine that he'd condemn partisanship this way:

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

... the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

Pence is a post-partisan? I don't think so.

And what's in it for him? Even if he believes this op-ed can start the process that will rid us of Trump and install him as president, he can't seriously imagine that the Republican base would sit still while he takes office in a coup. There'd be angry calls on the right for his impeachment if that happened, and he certainly wouldn't have a chance of winning the nomination on his own in 2020. Why put himself through that when he has a cushy gig now and an inside track to the presidency if Trump before the next election?

*****

But imagine if Pence actually is the author. If he is, he'll exposed and pressured to resign. Who would be Trump's choice as a replacement VP?

Hannity?

Jeanine Pirro?

Rudy?

Ivanka?

The mind boggles.

DEAR ANONYMOUS: WHAT YOU'RE DESCRIBING ACTUALLY IS A DEEP STATE

So -- about this anonymous op-ed by "a senior official in the Trump administration" who boasts that he and others in the White House are thwarting some of the president's worst instincts:

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

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

I don't know who the author is, but it's not a woman -- as Breitbart has noted, a Times tweet refers to the author as "he."

In Opinion

In an anonymous Op-Ed, a senior Trump administration official says he and others are working ​to frustrate the president’s “misguided impulses.” https://t.co/qW1IoM3AYY pic.twitter.com/rCHnQfcRjG

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 5, 2018

So it's not Kellyanne, or Nikki Haley, or Ivanka. Jennifer Rubin has a theory:

All I can say is before Bolton arrived no senior official wrote anonymous opeds for the NY Times #justsaying

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) September 5, 2018

As does Mike Cernovich:

"We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility." - NY Times today

"political competitions across the country reached new depths of incivility." McMaster in Foreign Affairshttps://t.co/EVeg76MT6a https://t.co/CZStOzqTDx

— Mike Cernovich 🇺🇸 (@Cernovich) September 5, 2018

And Omarosa has some thoughts:

The Author of the @nytimes OP-Ed about Trump?
Hint: Chose the one who is looking to exit the WH soon.

— OMAROSA (@OMAROSA) September 5, 2018

The author says of Trump, "Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people" -- which rings a bell for Julian Sanchez:

Sounds like the author’s a Reason subscriber; the magazine’s tagline (“free minds, free markets”) crops up as a description of the Republican principles Trump has discarded. https://t.co/ScTtp4oyiC

— Julian Sanchez (@normative) September 5, 2018

But the author also praises John McCain:

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

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

Who ticks all the boxes?

Beats me -- but I actually agree with Gateway Pundit's Christine Laila, up to a point:

The op-ed begins with the author admitting people within the Trump administration are ‘working diligently from within to frustrate parts of Trump’s agenda.’

But if you dare say there is a Deep State, you are a crazy conspiracy theorist....

What the author describes is a Deep State -- but it's a partly Trumpian Deep State:

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

Although Trump's most breathless admirers want you to believe that the Trump presidency represents a clean break with the establishments of both parties, he is obviously a down-the-line Republican on all these issues (and on drugs, abortion, the courts, Democratic/minority vote suppression, and many others). The administration's saboteurs want to keep all that going, while thwarting Trump in other matters.

What they're trying to prevent -- as we already know from Bob Woodward's book -- is trade war and World War III, because economic turmoil threatens GOP rule (as, obviously, does nuclear holocaust). Golf clap for trying to prevent Trump from killing us all or sending us all to the poorhouse -- but, sorry, as David Frum says, you could grow a spine and show your faces:

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the 25th Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.

Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

As Frum notes, Trump will now be on guard against any subversion, which means that the balancing act the author and his fellow saboteurs have maintained will no longer be possible:

What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.

And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this piece. They will be worse because of this piece.

Also, this will make the Trump diehards in the electorate cleave to the president all the more. You've proven that there's a cabal arrayed against him. Never mind that it's a cabal doing a lot of things the Trumpers like -- they now believe their worst fears are realized, and they'll regard Trump as even more heroic for remaining in power despite this... oh, what's the word they'll use?

TREASON?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018

Suffer the blow to your careers. Suffer the enmity of the Fox-addled crazies. Show some courage and blow some whistles -- openly.

But of course you won't. You wrote this op-ed in the hope that someone else will do the hard part. And clearly none of you have the moral compass for that, or you wouldn't be working where you're working.

MAN DENOUNCING "WITCHERY" RAMS LOCAL FOX STATION; CONSERVATIVES BLAME DEMS, CHUCK TODD

This incident does not seem to have had a left- or right-wing political motive:

A pickup driver repeatedly rammed the KDFW-TV (Channel 4) studios in downtown Dallas on Wednesday morning, ranting about treason and an officer-involved shooting, police said....

The suspect, identified as 34-year-old Michael Chadwick Fry, scattered papers everywhere, Channel 4 reporter Brandon Todd said. He was later arrested.

The papers he scattered were printouts of WFAA coverage of a prior arrest, when Fry was a passenger in a pickup that his companion rammed into a police car at a traffic stop. An officer shot and killed the driver, 21-year-old Roberto Hernandez.

"They tried to kill me. And they missed. And hit him," appear scribbled in the margins of the story. "They used brainwashing tactics."

... Dallas police spokeswoman Debra Webb said Fry was "obviously in an agitated state." He was upset about an officer-involved shooting in another city, a subject addressed in the papers he scattered.

The 2012 incident is described in this news story. If the story is accurate, Hernandez deliberately put his vehicle in reverse to smash it into a patrol car, and he was shot and killed for that, while Fry escaped injury.

This morning Fry drove his pickup truck into the KDFW studios for ... I'm not sure what reason. Here's a flyer he'd created:

Some of the papers the suspect was carrying when he repeatedly rammed his truck into the @FOX4 building ranting about a police involved shooting pic.twitter.com/LNZMiNLsal

— Natalie Solis (@Fox4Natalie) September 5, 2018

This is a copy of a story from Dallas station WFAA (an ABC affiliate) with handwritten accusations of not only "high treason" but "witchery" on the part of a "mob of females."

Whatever happened in 2012, I think it's safe to say that Fry is not entirely sane.

However, because the incident this morning took place not at ABC affiliate WFAA, but at KDFW -- which is a Fox affiliate -- many on the right rushed to judgment. PJ Media:

A man rammed his truck into the studios of Dallas Fox affiliate KDFW earlier this morning, just two days after Meet the Press host Chuck Todd published an article calling on his media colleagues to "start fighting back" against Fox News....

According to Todd, Fox News is the face of a 50-year vilification campaign targeting corporate media.

FrontPage Mag:

MAN RANTING ABOUT "HIGH TREASON" AFTER CRASHING TRUCK INTO FOX STUDIOS IS NEW DEM 2020 FRONTRUNNER

Move over Joe Biden. You're old news, Bernie Sanders. Go write another Pow Wow Chow cookbook, Elizabeth Warren. The 2020 Dem field has a new frontrunner who's even more committed to "resistance" than any of them.


... Sorry Cory Booker, fake tears and anger won't do it. Kirsten, you want to make it to the front of the pack, you need something more than socialism. You need to repeatedly crash a truck into a FOX affiliate.

Twitchy:

“Rhetoric clarification” needed: Did today’s attack at the Fox 4 studio in Dallas have anything to do with anti-Fox rhetoric from Brian Stelter, Mayor de Blasio and Chuck Todd?

...can we blame Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy and Chuck Todd for their extremist rhetoric about Fox News as the catalyst for this attack? Those are their rules and all:

I would just like rhetoric clarification. Clearly Stelter, de Blasio and Darcy's daily attacks on Fox played a part in this. As did Chuck Todd's op ed in the Atlantic about "Fighting back". Those are the rules here right? https://t.co/sHO5pd7VOO

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 5, 2018

Nope. Sorry.

ARE TAPES REALLY TRUMP'S KRYPTONITE? (updated)

Axios reports:

President Trump is livid at the betrayal and stunning allegations in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming "Fear," but limited in his ability to fight back because most of the interviews were caught on hundreds of hours of tape, officials tell Axios.

Why would the existence of tapes slow Trump down? He's known to have suggested that the Access Hollywood video was fabricated and, more recently, that NBC doctored the interview in which he effectively confessed to obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey.

However, in those cases he didn't offer a "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" defense in real time. In fact, after the Access Hollywood video came out, he made a public statement of remorse.

If he knew better, he'd realize that Woodward squirrels away his source material -- he's released a tape of a conversation he had with Trump that wasn't used for the book, but if his past habits are predictive, he won't release any of the tapes or transcripts on which the book is based. Trump is probably free to challenge as many specific claims as he pleases.

But maybe his advisers fear that Woodward might change his methods and release a tape or two. And that might be enough to strike fear into Trump and prevent him from issuing more than general challenges.

On the other hand, maybe Trump isn't doing a point-by-point rebuttal because the news stories about the book were simply too long for him to read. Even though the stories feature his name repeatedly, he might not have gotten all the way through them. So how can he reply in detail?

****

UPDATE:

Trump getting put in what Giuliani calls an "evidence trap" where people could be led to think he's an idiot just because abundant evidence proves it. So unfair! https://t.co/kTTILo4AxB

— Yasphalt Jungle (@Yastreblyansky) September 5, 2018

NICE WORK, BRET STEPHENS: TWO ERRORS IN A SIX-WORD HEADLINE

The headline of the new Bret Stephens column is provocative:

Now Twitter Edits The New Yorker

We haven't even gotten to the column itself and there are already two errors of fact.

Stephens, of course, is upset because David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, invited Steve Bannon to appear at the New Yorker Festival and then withdrew the invitation under pressure. But Twitter (or that other favorite villain, "the digital mob," which is blamed in the subheading) didn't force this decision all by itself. Moreover, the decision affects no content of the magazine.

As Stephens himself makes clear, outrage at the Bannon invitation started with other people scheduled to appear at the festival:

Following news of the invitation, other high-profile festival invitees, including producer Judd Apatow and actor Jim Carrey, tweeted that they would pull out if Bannon remained on the program. That helped start an online wave that crested with Remnick’s abrupt sounding of the retreat....

Yes, but Stephens writes as if the threatened withdrawals by high-profile invitees were utterly irrelevant to Remnick's decision. Do you think it meant nothing to Remnick that he was going to have to sell tickets to the presumably profit-making (or at least brand-enhancing) festival without boldface names such as Apatow, Carrey, and Jimmy Fallon? They're big draws -- but it's so much easier to blame Remnick's decision on the peasants who dared to rise above their station and complain on social media.

And it wasn't just big-name invitees. It was also Remnick's own staffers, as Stephens notes:

As Remnick acknowledged, members of his own staff also revolted at the invitation. One of his writers, Kathryn Schulz, took to Twitter to say she was “beyond appalled” and invited readers to write Remnick in order to add their voices to the pressure.

So why do we rabble get all the blame?

And why are we now sneeringly referred to as editors of the magazine? This interview wasn't scheduled to appear in print. It was supposed to be an ancillary spectacle meant for a live audience. As I said earlier today, Bannon has been interviewed repeatedly and at great length by many American media outlets in the past few months, to few complaints. The difference is that he wasn't interviewed as an honored, paid guest. Remnick could have interviewed Bannon, written up the conversation, and put the result in the pages of The New Yorker. There'd have been little outrage. Instead, he made Bannon the star of an infotainment spectacle bearing the New Yorker brand. It's not the magazine. And the anger didn't come just from us sans-culottes.

THE WOODWARD BOOK WON'T MOVE THE PUBLIC OPINION NEEDLE

As I predicted, the hype for the new Bob Woodward book began today. The Washington Post and CNN have near-identical stories on the book's contents; the Post also has a recording and transcript of a phone call in which Woodward tells Trump that he regrets not being able to interview the president for the book, despite repeated efforts to arrange the conversation.

Will the book matter? It should: It's more confirmation that Trump is nasty, ill-informed, reckless, and dishonest. Terrible policy changes are prevented by aides who secretly remove papers from his desk. The president's aides and lawyers think he's a simpleton and a congenital liar. It's not a pretty picture.

And yet those MAGA-hat-wearing diner customers in rural Pennsylvania won't be the least bit disillusioned.

Primarily, that's because Trump's reckless behavior is so on brand. When aides steal papers from Trump, it's to prevent decisions that sensible observers would consider reckless, but that Trump fans would regard as simple, clear, cut-through-the-BS acts of manly resolve:

Former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn saw a draft letter he considered dangerous to national security on the Oval Office desk.

The letter would have withdrawn the US from a critical trade agreement with South Korea. Trump's aides feared the fallout could jeopardize a top-secret national security program: the ability to detect a North Korean missile launch within just seven seconds.

Woodward reports Cohn was "appalled" that Trump might sign the letter. "I stole it off his desk," Cohn told an associate. "I wouldn't let him see it. He's never going to see that document. Got to protect the country."

More:

Cohn made a similar play to prevent Trump from pulling the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, something the president has long threatened to do. In spring 2017, Trump was eager to withdraw from NAFTA and told [then-staff secretary Rob] Porter: “Why aren’t we getting this done? Do your job. It’s tap, tap, tap. You’re just tapping me along. I want to do this.”

Under orders from the president, Porter drafted a notification letter withdrawing from NAFTA. But he and other advisers worried that it could trigger an economic and foreign relations crisis. So Porter consulted Cohn, who told him, according to Woodward: “I can stop this. I’ll just take the paper off his desk.”

Just withdraw from the South Korea trade agreement! Just withdraw from NAFTA! Conservatives have always loved presidents who have simple answers to problems -- think of Ronald Reagan or first-term George W. Bush. They hate pantywaist liberals with their silly nuance. (CNN tells us that "Trump called President Barack Obama a 'weak dick' for not acting in Syria, Woodward reports." "Weak Dick" is going to start showing up on right-wing sites as a name for Obama, and everyone in the tribe will immediately get the reference. By contrast, after the chemical attack in Syria in April 2017, Trump had to be prevented from assassinating Bashar al-Assad: “'Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,' Trump said, according to Woodward." I'm not sure what Vladimir Putin is thinking as he reads this, but wanting to "kill the fucking lot of them" is very on brand for a Republican president.)

Trumpers will see the paper-stealers (and Jim Mattis, who put the kibosh on the idea of killing Assad) as "establishment"/"elite"/"swamp" saboteurs who want to prevent Trump from expressing his true essence as a Man of Action. They'll see the lawyers who want to keep Trump from testifying before Robert Mueller the same way, even though it's obvious that the lawyers are right:

In one revelatory anecdote, Woodward describes a scene in the White House residence. Trump's lawyer, convinced the President would perjure himself, put Trump through a test — a practice interview for the one he might have with Mueller. Trump failed, according to Dowd, but the President still insisted he should testify....

But Trump seemed surprised at Dowd's reaction, Woodward writes. "You think I was struggling?" Trump asked.

Then, in an even more remarkable move, Dowd and Trump's current personal attorney Jay Sekulow went to Mueller's office and re-enacted the mock interview. Their goal: to argue that Trump couldn't possibly testify because he was incapable of telling the truth.

"He just made something up. That's his nature," Dowd said to Mueller....

Despite Dowd's efforts, Trump continued to insist he could testify....

Dowd's argument was stark: "There's no way you can get through these. ... Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jump suit."

What he couldn't say to Trump, according to Woodward, was what Dowd believed to be true: "You're a fucking liar."

You and I know that Trump is a fucking liar. The guys in the diner believe everyone else in the process is a liar and Trump is the great truth-teller, and should testify if he wants to because he'll destroy the whole witch hunt in the process.

Trumpers will see Woodward himself as a saboteur. Woodward says he contacted quite a few people in an effort to arrange a Trump interview for the book, but the interview never happened. In the conversation he and Trump had after the book was off to the printer, Trump says that the lack of an interview means that the book will be a hit job -- if Woodward had only managed to talk to Trump, the book would have been laudatory:

Trump: ... I’m just hearing about it. So we’re going to have a very inaccurate book, and that’s too bad. But I don’t blame you entirely.

BW: No, it’s [?] — it’s going to be accurate, I promise.

Trump: Yeah, okay. Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you.

The one item that could conceivably give a few Trumpers pause is this:

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. ... He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

A Democrat who said something like that would face serious consequences, but I think Trump will skate. Trumpism is a cult. Trump insulted John McCain during the campaign and veterans voted for him by a 2-to-1 margin. These days, Southern Trumpers are Trumpers first -- they know they're supposed to love Trump and hate Sessions, so they'll shrug this off.

TWO MONTHS AFTER SARAH SANDERS RESTAURANT EXPULSION, WINGNUTS STILL BOYCOTT ENTIRE TOWN

Okay, here's my last word on Steve Bannon and the allegedly "intolerant left."

Huh. Call me old-fashioned. But I would have thought that the point of a festival of ideas was to expose the audience to ideas. If you only invite your friends over, it’s called a dinner party. https://t.co/VwkL4zOrbX

— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) September 4, 2018

Let me point out that since the beginning of June, Steve Bannon has given lengthy interviews to MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, ABC's This Week, the Daily Beast, New York magazine, and Politico. There was nothing more than mild grumbling about these interviews; no other interviewees broke off cooperation with these news organizations because Bannon was interviewed. The interviews inspired no liberal boycotts. The response to the New Yorker Festival was because the invitation seemed to be an honor; Bannon was set to receive an honorarium for it.

So left-leaning people are not suppressing Bannon's ideas, even though I think we've heard just about enough of them.

****

Meanwhile, you know that conservatives are burning and otherwise mutilating Nike gear in protest of Colin Kaepernick's promotional contract with the company. You know that conservatives are livid because the soon-to-be-released movie First Man doesn't show the planting of a U.S. flag in its depiction of the first manned moon landing (and there are likely to be boycotts, even though the flag is shown in other scenes). But there's another event that seems to be setting off the right's outrage months after it occurred, and is causing problems for people other than the intended target.

AP reports from Lexington, Virginia:

A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The Roanoke Times reported Sunday that a regional tourism board is pulling together emergency funds to boost its digital marketing campaign....

The Red Hen incident in June prompted thousands of a calls and emails to the tourism office. They’re still coming in. The office received a letter on Thursday from a Georgia family that wrote to say it would never return because of what happened.

A story at PJ Media stokes the anger in its account of what happened that night:

Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of The Red Hen, reportedly followed the Sanders party across the street and organized a protest, "yelling and screaming at them from outside the restaurant and creating this scene," according to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, even though Sanders had left the party.

Mike Huckabee "reported" this even though he wasn't there at the time. Shortly after the restaurant incident, Snopes contacted people at local businesses who'd actually know whether this happened. None confirmed it and one said, “It’s a very small town, so if something like that had happened, I would know.”

Under pressure, Wilkinson stepped down as a member of the business group Main Street Lexingon more than two months ago.

Still, the right -- which is, of course, free to boycott the restaurant -- is apparently thrilled that the whole town is suffering.

Town That Refused to Serve Sarah Sanders Now Needs Emergency Funds Because Suddenly Nobody Wants to Go There https://t.co/dMV8MTKEhO

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) September 4, 2018

Too bad an intolerant #left hater ruined opportunities for other small business owners. #DemocratsAreDangerous https://t.co/PVqqWFrwOy

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 3, 2018

No, James -- too bad you guys are taking it out on everyone else in the town.

FASCISM (AND SELF-PROMOTION) FOR TOTEBAGGERS

Every totebag-wielding Manhattanite knows what it means to appear "in conversation with" David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival or with some other cultural luminary at the 92nd Street Y: It means your work is admired and you're going to approached with something close to reverence. That's one reason why the now-rescinded invitation from Remnick to Steve Bannon seemed so inappropriate: The festival is not a forum at which featured guests are typically grilled. It's not even The View, where things occasionally get ugly. It's usually a lovefest.

I know, I know -- before uninviting Bannon, Remnick swore he'd pull no punches during the discussion:

“I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” he said.

Which brings me to my favorite tweets on this subject:

every journalist dreams of being the one hero to truly unpack steve bannon... to pull back the mask. they do this with interviews where they let him rant about china for 40 minutes

— j.r. hennessy (@jrhennessy) September 3, 2018

bannon: i think we should bring back feudalism
journalist: wow
bannon: i think europe should be 900 small ethnic enclaves and we should nuke china
journalist: this is dizzy stuff

— j.r. hennessy (@jrhennessy) September 3, 2018

That's Bannon -- he bamboozles listeners, including supposedly intelligent interviewers, with a firehose spew of words that sound reasonably intelligent but mostly serve as a delivery system for (a) white nationalism and (b) self-promotion. The former is reason enough not to invite him, but so is the latter. Here's a guy who lost his powerful government job, who lost his Mercer family financing, and who is now going from interviewer to interviewer looking for a way to shoehorn himself back into the public consciousness. If his racism isn't enough reason to give him a wide berth, then his current irrelevance ought to be the deciding factor. He was a noxious presence in our political life, but now he's out of the picture -- except that he's desperate to be a noxious presence again. Why help him?

He has a financial need for a new grift. He has a psychological need to be taken seriously. I don't want to help him fulfill either of these needs. I don't know why the hell David Remnick wanted to.

YES, BUT HOW BIG IS THE "MORE IMPORTANT TO OWN THE LIBS" CAUCUS?

At The Washington Post, Aaron Blake tries to determine the number of true Trump diehards:

Matthew Miller's reaction to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll Friday caught my eye. The poll showed just 18 percent of Americans believed President Trump should pardon Paul Manafort.

"This is the 'shoot someone on 5th Avenue' caucus, and it's much lower than Trump would have you believe," the former Obama-era Justice Department official tweeted....

Which got me thinking: How big is the "shoot someone on Fifth Avenue" caucus in America?

The answer I arrived at as anywhere from 1 in 8 to 1 in 5 Americans -- between 12 and 20 percent, around where Miller pegged it.

Blake reaches this conclusion after looking at responses to poll questions such as "12 percent say it's not a 'big deal' if Russia interferes to help Republicans (Yahoo-SurveyMonkey) and "15 percent say there is almost nothing Trump could do to lose their support (Public Religion Research Institute). Blake notes that last year Public Policy Polling directly asked respondents whether they would approve if Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue (22% said they would, perhaps just out spite).

But does all of this prove that Trump could someday fall to sub-Nixon numbers? Maybe, maybe not. (Nixon's lowest Gallup approval rating was 24%.)

Trump isn't really going to shoot anyone. He clearly seems capable of terrible behavior, but he's a lazy, pampered couch-potato septuagenarian. Shooting people is just not his style.

What might we someday learn that Trump has done? Compromised our electoral system on his own and Vladimir Putin's behalf? Engaged in massive amounts of self-dealing? Frolicked with urinating Russian prostitutes?

We've already had the Access Hollywood tape and the Stormy Daniels story. We've had the insults of John McCain, Serge Kovaleski, Alicia Machado, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, and the Khan family. We've had Charlottesville. Trump's numbers sink, but he seems to have a floor of about 35% support.

That's because his approval rating isn't a referendum on a particular Trump deed. Trump might do something that only 12 to 20 percent of the public approves of. But a larger percentage of the public will probably still approve of him, no matter what he's done.

That's because he's not judged in isolation -- he's be judged against his political opponents. Negative partisanship seems to be good for at least 10 extra points, because, as we learned in 2016, you can do pretty much anything and Republican voters will say that Democrats are worse.

Recent polls have shown a significant drop in Trump's approval rating -- but that mid-30s floor is still holding. I think his numbers will inch up soon, once we're no longer talking about his insulting response to the death of John McCain and the fact that Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are now felons. Trump will have more Republican support at the bitter end than Nixon did, because owning the libs, and keeping them out of power, is more important to GOP voters now.

THE COVERAGE OF JOHN McCAIN'S FUNERAL CONFIRMS MY WORST FEARS ABOUT 2020

There were many clear rebukes of President Trump at John McCain's funeral. That's good. But the headline to this report on the funeral by The New Yorker's Susan Glasser makes my heart sink:

John McCain’s Funeral Was the Biggest Resistance Meeting Yet

Glasser writes:

This was to be no mere laying to rest of a Washington wise man, nor just another funeral of an elder statesman whose passing would be marked by flowery words about the end of an era. It was a meeting of the Resistance, under vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows.

And who are the resisters at this biggest-ever meeting of the Resistance? Mainstream politicians, particularly Republicans:

... McCain’s grand funeral ... underscored a fact that is often lost about Washington these days. The city is much more bipartisan, in some respects, than it has ever been, more united than it may currently seem, in its hatred of Donald Trump.

Some are more forthright about this than others, for understandable reasons. Others are circumspect, especially the elected Republican officials who have now publicly bowed to Trump after trying and failing to stop his ascendance in their party. But their presence at McCain’s funeral suggested that the final chapter has not yet been written in the Republican drama over what to do about the crude interloper who has taken over their party.

Peter Baker's New York Times story also stresses Republican resentment of Trump, although the word "underground" substitutes for "resistance":

Like Mr. McCain, many of the Republicans who attended have found themselves deeply discouraged by their own party’s president. But unlike Mr. McCain, most of them do not say so out loud, for fear of rage by Twitter or retribution by the base. It was almost as if it were a meeting of Washington’s political underground, if the underground met in a grand cathedral with 10,650 organ pipes.

Glaaser says "Resistance." Baker says "underground." And Charlie Pierce's coverage of the funeral also talks of combat:

We let the customs, manners, norms and institutions weaken through neglect and now we are in open conflict with an elected president and, make no mistake about it, John McCain's funeral was a council of war, and it was a council of war because that's what John McCain meant it to be.

The funeral orations of Barack Obama, Meghan McCain, and George W. Bush, Pierce writes, were "compass points on a battlefield.... They are fighting words now."

Do you see what's going on here? Liberals and leftists have spent the past two years organizing street marches, sit-ins in legislators' offices, social media activism, and campaigns for elected office, often featuring candidates who'd never thought of running until the words and deeds of Donald Trump began to fill them with righteous rage. A dozen or more Democrats are preparing to respond to anger at Trump and the status quo in politics -- which also includes deeply entrenched inequality, police brutality, a worsening climate, and other crises -- by running for president as proud progressives in 2020.

But who are we now told is leading the Resistance? Mainstream politicians, particularly Republicans.

We're being told that the opposite of Trump isn't progressivism -- it's the status quo ante. We're being prepared for a 2020 campaign in which calls for single-payer health insurance and a $15 minimum wage will be received less favorably than the Reaganism-with-a-human-face that's offered by Jeff Flake, John Kasich, or Ben Sasse in an utterly futile GOP primary campaign against Trump. Conservatives running against Trump will win the media's praise, as will centrists like Mike Bloomberg who might run in the Democratic primaries.

This is a slap in the face to the real resisters. Moreover, it's a warning to anyone who plans to run to the left in 2020: You may think the media will be receptive to your campaign because you're running as the antithesis of the hated Trump, but you'll be ignored, if not treated with contempt. If you win the presidency, it will be in spite of opinion-shapers who seem to be anti-Trump now, not with their help.

THE McCAINS GRIEVE, BUT WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE REAL VICTIMS -- THE TRUMP FAMILY?

There is butthurt in Trumpistan. Fox News reports:

Meghan McCain and President Barack Obama took apparent swipes at President Trump on Saturday in a eulogy for John McCain....

"The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,' McCain's daughter said....

Obama ... derided those in politics who traffic in "bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage."

He also attacked "a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear."

... Meghan McCain ... said that her father's passing represented the passing of "American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served."

Does any of this even qualify as insulting these days? Neither of the speakers even gave Trump an infantile nickname! If Obama or Meghan had called him "Dorky Donnie, the Colludin' Commander in Chief" then he'd have reason to be upset.

But at Gateway Pundit, Trump suck-up Jim Hoft is livid. To hell with the grieving family! What about the real victims -- Ivanka and Jared?

John McCain was eulogized today at a memorial in Washington DC....

Speaker after speaker, from Meghan McCain, to George W. Bush, to Barack Obama took turns to rip President Trump in words of anger.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were in attendance.

They looked sad and embarrassed at the nonstop abuse.

Do they look "sad and embarrassed at the nonstop abuse"? I think the way they always look -- Botoxed and emotionless.

This was a horrific display by the DC elites.

Yup -- according to Jim Hoft, Jared and Ivanka were victimized by ... the DC elites.

I have no words.

And I prefer Paul Rudnick's take on Javanka at the funeral:

Grifters Carl and Nolene Burpee were arrested outside the McCain memorial, after being found with stolen silverware, watches and cufflinks in their pockets and in Nolene's wig. They claimed to be the deceased's cousins "from back in Tupelo" and Nolene says, "We loved Mr. McCrane" pic.twitter.com/wPegYygVlM

— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) September 1, 2018

THE RIGHT: AWFUL THAT FARRAKHAN WAS AT ARETHA'S FUNERAL! ALSO THE RIGHT: AWFUL THAT FARRAKHAN WASN'T IN MORE PICTURES!

I don't know why Louis Farrakhan was invited to Aretha Franklin's funeral. Deadline quotes a statement from Farrakhan that cites his long acquaintance with Franklin:

'In 1972, when I was minister in New York City, Temple No 7, the police attacked our mosque. Within a few hours, Aretha Franklin came to the mosque, to my office, and said that she saw the news and came as quickly as she could to stand with us and offer us her support,’ Farrakhan wrote.

'She asked me if Rev Jesse Jackson had been there to show support. I said, not yet. She said, he’ll be here within 48 hours. Rev Jackson came and stood with the Muslims....'

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League can get you up to speed on Farrakhan's anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering. But this was Franklin's choice. He was there, along with a wide range of other luminaries. Would you not go to Aretha's funeral because he was in attendance? She's Aretha Franklin. Of course you'd go.

No one on the right seems prepared to argue that attendees should have boycotted the funeral -- but they seem rather obsessed with Farrakhan's presence, as if the rest of the event was just a sideshow. Here's a report from BizPac Review:

The tributes were “amazing” [Martha] MacCallum said to her panel on Fox News’ “The Story” Friday. “But I did keep finding myself distracted by Louis Farrakhan who was in every single shot. I’m thinking, ‘What was he doing there?’”

... “Why was he so front and center?” MacCallum asked. “It’s something that’s supposed to be about Aretha Franklin became, I thought, in many ways about some of these gentlemen who were right behind.”

Really, Martha, the funeral was about Aretha, except to obsessives like you, and to fellow righties at sites such as the Daily Caller ("ANTI-SEMITE LOUIS FARRAKHAN SPOTTED IN THE FRONT ROW AT ARETHA FRANKLIN’S FUNERAL"), Townhall ("Bill Clinton Sits on Stage with Louis Farrakhan At Aretha Franklin's Memorial Service"), PJ Media ("Bill Clinton Stands Feet Away From Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin Funeral"), and Hot Air ("Just A Reminder: Louis Farrakhan Is Sufficiently Mainstream To Have Appeared Onstage With A Former President Today").

And while one message in the right-wing media was "Why is Farrakhan so visible at this funeral?," another message was "Why is the sneaky liberal media trying to make him invisible?" You just can't win with these people. Gateway Pundit's headline is "MORE LIES: Liberal Media Crops Louis Farrakhan Out of Photos with Bill Clinton at Aretha Franklin’s Funeral." Twitchy has "POOF HE’S GONE! MSNBC and ABC crop out Louis Farrakhan from Aretha Franklin funeral photo." BizPac Review's headline: "Farrakhan was ‘front and center’ at Aretha funeral, but networks made him magically disappear." All because some of the wide shots don't show Farrakhan (while others do).

Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and former Pres. Bill Clinton seated next to one another at the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit for Aretha Franklin's funeral service. All three are expected to deliver personal remarks on the iconic singer. https://t.co/GsAKjngPBB pic.twitter.com/Z4dnVb3iT4

— ABC News (@ABC) August 31, 2018

Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and fmr. President Bill Clinton attend Aretha Franklin's funeral celebration. https://t.co/MTlJAs1ET2 pic.twitter.com/hI7Z4GtvnV

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 31, 2018

On stage in front at Aretha Franklin’s funeral are Min. Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and former president Bill Clinton https://t.co/FOic3yqVw8 #ArethaHomegoing pic.twitter.com/ClQOPuU6Jt

— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) August 31, 2018

Here's CBSNews.com with Farrakhan in a photo. Here's a Farrakhan shot at The New York Times.

But the right wants you to believe there was a liberal-media conspiracy of silence regarding Farrakhan's presence.

And then, on the other hand, the Daily Wire's headline is "HYPOCRITES: Democrats Try Mainstreaming Racist Preacher Farrakhan At Aretha Franklin's Funeral." We know that the right believes the Democratic Party and the mainstream media are just separate tentacles of the same evil octopus. So the media is bad for not showing Farrakhan repeatedly, but Democrats who attended the funeral are bad for standing "feet away" from him because it helped "mainstream" Farrakhan?

I give up.