George Packer's Blog, page 82

Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now

On Wednesday morning, Politico reported that Steve Bannon, the self-styled “economic nationalist” who is Donald Trump’s senior political strategist, and Peter Navarro, the free-trade skeptic who heads up the newly formed National Trade Council at the White House, had drafted an executive order signalling the Administration’s intention to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. “A draft order has been submitted for final stages of review and could be unveiled late this week or early next,” the Politico story said. Other media outlets followed up with their own reports, based on guidance from unnamed Administration officials, saying that Trump was preparing to possibly sign the executive order on Saturday, his hundredth day in office.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Global Effort to Flatter Ivanka
Canadian Immigration Firm Sees a Boom in the Trump Era
One Hundred Days of Ineptitude

The Global Effort to Flatter Ivanka

The international project of flattering Ivanka Trump—which some of the world’s most notable women, from Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, to Queen Máxima, of the Netherlands, engaged in at a panel discussion during the W20 conference, in Berlin, this week—does not always run smoothly. There was, first, the achingly obvious oddity of deciding that Trump, whose experience on the public stage largely consists of marketing her clothing and jewelry lines, and her efforts to get her father, Donald Trump, elected, was qualified to sit between Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Minister of Canada. That was quickly followed by the dispiriting thought that Trump might actually have as much power over people’s lives as the other women, through the influence that she supposedly wields over her father. Why else would the head of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, have co-authored an op-ed in the Financial Times with her, on the importance of promoting female entrepreneurship? Their insights include this: “mentorship opportunities and access to networks bring learning opportunities and connections to capital and markets.” There are probably many people in the world who would like to mentor Trump and have access to her networks. It might even explain why Merkel invited her to Berlin, a move that the German press praised as “klug,” or clever, in terms of opening a route to President Trump—and why Merkel suggested, from the stage, that the World Bank look at ways to get funding to women entrepreneurs in the developing world, and then, at an event afterward, complimented Ivanka for supporting the idea. But that is also where it all got a little bit confusing, as things tend to with the Trumps.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now
Canadian Immigration Firm Sees a Boom in the Trump Era
One Hundred Days of Ineptitude

Canadian Immigration Firm Sees a Boom in the Trump Era

Canada by Choice is a small, family-run immigration consultancy in Windsor, Ontario. It gives legal advice to people who are interested in moving to Canada and helps them fill out the necessary paperwork to enter the country. Hussein Zarif has worked on marketing and outreach at the company for the past four years—it’s his job to find clients and connect them with the firm’s staff. The clientele come mostly from the Middle East, China, and India, and that’s where Zarif has always focussed his outreach budget, placing online ads that appear on Facebook and Google. That was before Donald Trump. Since November 8th, the firm has been flooded with calls from the U.S., and the Web site has crashed a few times because of heavy traffic. Zarif knew that Americans often threatened to move to Canada after a contentious election, but he hadn’t ever taken them seriously. “Maybe there is something behind all this,” he remembers thinking. “I’ll put some ads out and see what happens.” He used recent quotes from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a tagline for ads on Facebook and Google which ran in the U.S.: “Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s NAFTA Reversal Confirms the Globalists Are in Charge—For Now
The Global Effort to Flatter Ivanka
One Hundred Days of Ineptitude

Trump Wants to Give Himself a Tax Cut and Undermine the Tax Code

“This is quite an historic day for us…. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big,” Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, who now serves as President Trump’s top economic adviser, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. Trump’s desire to reform the U.S. tax code is big—clearly—but the actual plan, which Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin unveiled at the press conference, was nothing more than a sketch. And even as the details remain to be filled out, there’s much reason to doubt the plan’s viability in Congress. Still, Cohn and Mnuchin confirmed a couple of important things about this Administration’s approach and intentions when it comes to taxes.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Your Competition for the Coffee Shop’s Couch Seat
“Bush Mama”: A Landmark Film, and a Reminder of Cinema’s Exclusionary History
What Pregnant Athletes Can Achieve

What Pregnant Athletes Can Achieve

Last Wednesday, Serena Williams posted a selfie to Snapchat that showed her in a bright yellow one-piece swimsuit, her body cocked to the side to reveal a small but distinct baby bump. Beneath the photo was the caption “20 weeks.” Fans on the Internet went wild, then did some arithmetic, and determined that, if Williams was indeed twenty weeks into a pregnancy, she had likely been pregnant during her record-breaking win at the Australian Open, in January. (Williams later deleted the Snapchat post, but a spokesperson confirmed that she and her fiancé, the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, are expecting a baby in the fall, and that she’ll return to the tour in 2018.) This calculation seemed to prove that Williams was even more superhuman an athlete than was previously understood. The model Brooklyn Decker, who had her first child with her husband, the tennis player Andy Roddick, in 2015, tweeted, “She won a grand slam pregnant. I needed Andy to dress me, carry me, and delicately place me on the toilet when I was 4 weeks pregnant.” The popular Twitter account @CommonWhiteGirl wrote, “Idgaf who you think the greatest athlete ever is. They didn’t win a major title pregnant.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Trying to Describe Giannis Antetokounmpo
Olympic Bidding in the Age of Trump and Le Pen
Analytics Reach the Rec League

The War Powers of President Trump

Recent pictures of President Donald J. Trump entertaining an unusual trio of dinner guests at the White House—Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor; Kid Rock, the singer; and the provocateur-musician Ted Nugent—looked like a scene out of “A Clockwork Orange,” the Stanley Kubrick film based on Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel. It lacked only the actual trashing of the place. (Nugent’s public statements include him saying, “Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun.”) No one, though, will tell Trump to stop dining with whomever he chooses. After all, he’s the President, and a President can do pretty much as he pleases.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat’s Dream
How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall
Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency

Trump’s Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat’s Dream

According to news accounts, the tax plan that the Trump Administration will release on Wednesday won’t be a comprehensive proposal but, rather, a statement of general principles—a glorified wish list. It’s well known in Washington that the staffers working for Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, and Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, are a good ways away from drafting a detailed proposal, and that the only reason the Administration is making an announcement this week is that the President demanded one in advance of Saturday, which marks his hundredth day in office.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall
Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 25th

How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall

One reliable way to know that Donald Trump has reversed himself on an issue is if he denies having done any such thing. The pattern repeats itself: his Administration is dealt a major setback—the courts blocking his travel bans, the G.O.P. health-care bill dying in the House—and Trump responds by decreeing that “great progress” is being made and the media is neglecting to cover it. It’s easy to become inured to how bizarre this is: America has a President who denies observable reality and uses his social-media accounts to feed his supporters an alternate version of the truth. All politicians spin. Trump lies, regularly and brazenly.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat’s Dream
Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 25th

Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency

Why are we spending so much time trying to match what Donald J. Trump says to reality? Is it because he is the President of the United States, and could start a war with words? Or because we place some sort of value on the truth, or on the meaning of words? Whatever the source of our folly, it is, from the President’s perspective, just that: a big waste of time. Reality will contort itself to match his imagination—his Presidentialness—all on its own. He doesn’t even need to sign laws, let alone accurately describe what he wants to do. He is in the White House; the world and time bend.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat’s Dream
How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 25th

Roger Stone and the Trump-Nixon Connection

“I believe in winning,” Roger Stone, the notorious political provocateur, says near the beginning of the fascinating new Netflix documentary about his life. The film, called “Get Me Roger Stone,” takes us from his days as a teen-age dirty trickster in the Watergate era through his rise to prominence as a consultant for Ronald Reagan; his precipitous fall in a sex scandal, during Bob Dole’s 1996 Presidential campaign; his murky role in the Florida recount of 2000; and, finally, and most important, his long-time sponsorship of the Presidential ambitions of Donald Trump. (Netflix has posted a trailer for the documentary, which will be available for streaming on May 12th. I profiled Stone in 2008, and I’m interviewed in the film.) Stone sometimes appears to be in on the joke about his cartoonish cynicism, but there’s a serious message at the core of the film—and in Stone’s return to prominence with Trump. For more than a generation, Republican politicos have worshipped at the altar of Reagan and sought to emulate his optimistic vision for a growing nation. Stone worked for Reagan and offers dutiful praise for him, but it’s clear that Stone’s sentiments are really aligned with a different Republican President. In his heart, Stone is a Richard Nixon man. More to the point, so is Trump.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat’s Dream
How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall
Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency