John Cassidy's Blog, page 18

The Carrier Deal and Trump’s Challenge to Democrats

There have been a range of reactions to the deal that Donald Trump and Mike Pence struck with Carrier Corporation, in which the century-old manufacturer of heating and ventilation systems agreed to keep hundreds of jobs at a plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, rather than moving them to Monterrey, Mexico. As I was reading some of these responses, I recalled a presentation that Stan Greenberg, the veteran Democratic pollster, gave during the Democratic National Convention, in July.

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Travelling with James Mattis, Donald Trump’s Pick for Secretary of Defense
Seven Electors Against Trump
The Oscars and the Election

Mitt Romney’s Humiliating Trump Reversal

It’s “like old times,” Mitt Romney said to a group of reporters on Tuesday night as he emerged from Trump International Hotel, which is in the old Gulf & Western building, at 1 Central Park West. Rubbing his hands together and flashing a smile that stretched all the way from his bottom teeth to his upper lip, he added, “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump. We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”

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Elvis Costello at the Beacon: Misery and Splendor
Nigel Farage on the Story Behind His Friendship with Trump
Solving the Problem of Fake News

The First Victims of Repealing Obamacare Will Be the Sick and the Poor

It has been widely noted that Donald Trump’s choice of Tom Price, the Republican congressman from Georgia, to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services makes a full-blown repeal of the Affordable Care Act more likely. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, isn’t just an armchair critic of Obamacare. In 2009, he put forward the Empowering Patients First Act, which was then intended as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. It has since evolved into a replacement for it. In a very useful piece on Price’s proposal, which he reintroduced in 2011, 2013, and 2015, Vox’s Sarah Kliff explains how Price’s bill goes beyond other Republican repeal plans, including the one endorsed by Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House.

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Mitt Romney’s Humiliating Trump Reversal
Nigel Farage on the Story Behind His Friendship with Trump
Solving the Problem of Fake News

Trump’s Challenge to American Democracy

Over Thanksgiving, I read up on some history: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Berlusconi, Putin—“Strong Men 101.” I’d been meaning to do this for a while, and my resolve was strengthened after coming across an article on the risks of democratic erosion by Jeff Colgan, a political scientist at Brown University, who warned, “In light of Donald Trump’s illiberal tendencies, we have to take seriously the (unlikely) possibility that democracy and rule of law could weaken in the United States.” To help guard against this possibility, Colgan offered ten “warning signs of democratic breakdown.” They included attacks and restrictions on the press, vilification of foreigners and minorities, the intimidation of legislators, and the use of crises to justify emergency security measures.

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Trump’s Choice on Cuba
President-Elect Trump’s Cabinet Picks
Ivanka Trump’s Terrible Book Helps Explain the Trump-Family Ethos

Two Theories About Donald Trump’s Meeting with the New York Times

Evidently, it was the Dr. Jekyll version of Donald Trump who left his Fifth Avenue aerie around noon on Tuesday and skipped across town to the offices of the “failing New York Times.” Having first cancelled the meeting via a breakfast-time tweet—Mr. Hyde clearly didn’t get the entire day off—before later agreeing to restore it to his schedule, Trump struck a much more emollient note than he did at a confab with network-news bigwigs on Monday, where he berated his guests. (David Remnick wrote about that meeting.)

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Trump’s Businesses Represent an Impossible Conflict of Interest

During the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump has led the media in a merry dance, turning the workings of a transition team and staffing of an Administration into a television reality show, complete with elaborately staged auditions at real-world locations (Trump Tower, Trump National Golf Club), public humiliations (Chris Christie), and surprise appearances (Eva Moskowitz, Mitt Romney). Meanwhile, Trump has said next to nothing about one of the most pressing questions he faces: What does he intend to do with his far-flung business interests and the glaring conflicts of interest they potentially represent?

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Barney Frank Looks for the Bright Side of Trump’s Win
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Afternoon Cartoon: Tuesday, November 22nd

The Enduring Scandal of Trump University

Give Donald Trump one thing: He’s mastered the political art of diverting attention from damaging news stories. On Friday afternoon, Trump’s lawyers and the Attorney General of New York, Eric Schneiderman, announced that they had reached an agreement to settle three civil cases brought against the President-elect and Trump University, the scandal-plagued learning annex that he operated from 2005 to 2011.

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Has Rudy Giuliani Been Done In by His Own Buck-Raking?

During the Presidential campaign, there was no more hysterical critic of Hillary Clinton and her ethics than Rudy Giuliani. In August, he suggested that allegations of a “pay to play” scheme involving the Clinton Foundation—which received donations from foreign governments and billionaires—and the State Department were going to turn into something “bigger than Watergate.” The night before Election Day, speaking in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Giuliani said, of Clinton, “We have never had a person running for President who is so thoroughly corrupt.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Enduring Scandal of Trump University
What Americans Against Trump Can Learn from the Failures of the Israeli Opposition
What the Presidency is Worth to Donald Trump

Has Rudy Giuliani Been Done in by His Own Buck-Raking?

During the Presidential campaign, there was no more hysterical critic of Hillary Clinton and her ethics than Rudy Giuliani. In August, he suggested that allegations of a “pay to play” scheme involving the Clinton Foundation—which received donations from foreign governments and billionaires—and the State Department were going to turn into something “bigger than Watergate.” The night before Election Day, speaking in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Giuliani said, of Clinton, “We have never had a person running for President who is so thoroughly corrupt.”

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The Gathering Storm of Protest Against Trump
What You Can Do
Undocumented in a Red State and Asking, “What Now?”

Coming to Terms with Trumponomics

Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, appeared Wednesday morning on CNBC, and he laid into Donald Trump’s economic program. Trump’s proposed tax cuts don’t make sense, Summers said, because they would target very high earners, meaning that a lot of the money they free up could end up being saved, rather than spent. And Trump’s infrastructure plans are questionable, Summers argued, because in at least one version of the plans, they depend largely on private financing. The problem, Summers said, is that pension funds and other big investors won’t invest in essential tasks like repairing the nation’s roads, bridges, and airports, because projects like those don’t produce any revenues. So where would the financing for them come from?

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With Health-Care Reform, Listen Carefully to Trump’s Words
Watching “Arrival” After the Election
Donald Trump’s First, Alarming Week as President-Elect