| From: Bill Wolf | 9/12/2024 8:28:10 AM | | | | | | I am the only lawyer in American history to serve both as White House counsel and as attorney general. So, while that does not make me special, it does give me a rather unique perspective about presidential decision-making and the necessity of electing a president who respects the rule of law to safeguard our liberties and way of life.
The American presidency is the most powerful position in the world. Of course, our constitution and laws, as well as institutions such as Congress and our courts, act as guardrails to that power. The law provides the certainty of accountability and fundamental fairness. Yet it is the president’s integrity, honesty and respect for our institutions that may be the most important and reliable check on abuses of power.
As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump — perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation — eyes a return to the White House. For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.
politico.com
Opinion by Alberto Gonzales
09/12/2024 05:00 AM EDT
Alberto R. Gonzales served as U.S. attorney general and counsel to the president in the George W. Bush administration. |
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| To: Bill Wolf who wrote (12104) | 9/13/2024 10:10:10 AM | | From: Bill Wolf | | | | A Decisive but Shallow Debate Win for Harris
Trump showed he isn’t up to the job. But her lack of substance won’t escape the voters’ notice.
By Peggy Noonan
Sept. 12, 2024 6:27 pm ET
Taylor Swift on stage at a performance in Lisbon and Kamala Harris on stage at a presidential debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia. Photo: andre dias nobresaul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
He lost, she won, full stop.
Kamala Harris is a political athlete. And she can act—the amused, skeptical squint, the laughing tilt of the head, the hand on her chin. She was more interesting than Donald Trump, not only because she conveyed a greater air of dynamism but because she seemed interested in what was going on around her.
The two major headlines: First, Ms. Harris showed what she needed to show, that she is tough enough, bright enough, quick enough. People hadn’t really seen her tested. She had been elevated with mysterious speed in a drama whose facts we still don’t fully know. In the summer she made a good early impression with strong speeches and events. But she did all that on teleprompter. In the debate she wasn’t on teleprompter. She had to stand there and do it, and she did. Did she present herself as a plausible president? Yes.
Second, the incapacity of Mr. Trump. He was famously unable to portray her as outside the mainstream, but the news is he didn’t seem to try. He couldn’t prosecute his case because his sentences collapsed. He leaves words out, and he’ll refer to “he” and “them” and you’re not sure who he’s talking about. His mind has always pinballed, but Tuesday night the pinball machine seemed broken, like the flipper button wasn’t working and the launcher was clogged. He has been spoiled by his safe space, his rallies, where his weird free associations amuse the crowd and his non sequiturs are applauded as authenticity. That doesn’t work on a debate stage. It is strange he didn’t know this. And here is the news, for me. In the past it was possible to think he might make more sense next time. But I don’t think he can do better than this. I felt a lot of his supporters would be coming to terms with a deterioration in his ability to publicly present himself.
But here is an important sub-headline. Ms. Harris won shallowly. I mean not that she won on points, or that it was close—it wasn’t, she creamed him—but that she won while using prepared feints and sallies and pieces of stump speech, not by attempting to be more substantive or revealing. When you address questions in a straightforward way and reveal your thinking, you are showing respect. You’re showing you trust people to give you a fair hearing and make a measured decision. Voters can see it, and they appreciate it. They feel the absence of these things, too, and don’t like it.
She was often evasive, and full of clever and not-so-clever dodges. Trump supporters, and not only they, perceived a disparity in how the moderators treated the candidates. So did I. When Ms. Harris didn’t fully answer—even questions of major importance, such as immigration, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and her changes in political stands—they did not follow up or press her. I don’t remember a moment when anyone—including Mr. Trump—tried to pin her down. She got away with a lot of highly rehearsed glibness and often seemed slippery. Sometimes you have to slip and slide in politics but slipperiness doesn’t wear well.
Still, if you would be a Republican and president you must know how to ride with media predilections, how to be stern with your foe when the press won’t. And it’s hard to respect Mr. Trump for not calling the moderators on it in real time and then using it afterwards, like a blubbering baby, as an excuse for his failures.
We’ll see soon in polls the impact of her victory, whether it’s small or significant, and whether it changed much in the battleground states.
What should each candidate do now? I asked some Republican veterans, almost all of whom worked on George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign, after the debate. One said there is nothing for either camp to do but focus on turnout. “I think we are beyond changing minds, and I doubt the ‘debate’ did much to change any minds or significantly reduce the number of undecided. I think both sides are down to the ground game.”
Another agreed, saying that experience and data had taught him the value of reaching out and knocking on doors: “The best way to get out the vote is face-to-face contact.” Another said, “ ‘Let Trump be Trump’ isn’t where the electorate is at, and at this point is kinda self-defeating.” Mr. Trump should make sure his base maintains its excitement: “Do as many Fox and OAN town halls as possible.” A fourth old hound said the Harris campaign “should have a full-court press to get young women to vote, starting with sororities” in North Carolina and Georgia. He was thinking of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Ms. Harris and its potential impact.
She should also do interviews—a lot.
Should there be a second debate? Absolutely. With 7½ weeks to go there’s plenty of time, and it would serve the public in that the more information the better; the better you know them the better. It could be good for both candidates. For Ms. Harris it would be a chance to appear more substantive in terms of policy and to nail down what progress she made Tuesday night. Whatever you like or could like, she could deepen. If she wins, that deepening would help her presidency. And clearly she’s not afraid. Mr. Trump could use another debate to try to recover from whatever he just lost, and to see if he can make a coherent case against the current administration, and for change. I don’t know if he has what it takes to achieve that. (Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he will refuse a second debate, so maybe he wonders too. But he not infrequently changes his mind.)
Finally, yes, it is amazing that Ms. Swift’s endorsement could change the outcome of the election but: America. We’ve been in love with our entertainers and celebrities since forever. If Rudolph Valentino had come out in support of Calvin Coolidge in 1924, his landslide would have been even bigger.
Ms. Swift’s statement, released at the end of the debate, was a little master class in how to cloak a dramatic move that might invite charges of hubris in an air of velvety modesty. She urged her fans to read up on the issues and do more political research. She timed her announcement so that it came at the exact moment everyone was consumed and distracted by the debate, thus taking any hard edges off its impact. She sweetly offered that she felt she had to make her stand clear because there was an artificial-intelligence thing out there in which she appears, falsely, to be endorsing Mr. Trump, and unfortunately he posted it to his site. So she’s just trying to clear things up and correct the record. It went out to her 284 million followers on Instagram.
Ms. Swift’s a real athlete too. And there is no way, in a 50/50 race, her decision won’t have impact.
wsj.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/14/2024 7:51:19 AM | | | | | | Donald Trump and Loomer Tunes
Why is the former President hanging with a 9/11 conspiracist?
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 13, 2024 5:50 pm ET
Laura Loomer arrives with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at Philadelphia International Airport on Tuesday Photo: Chris Szagola/Associated Press
Donald Trump likes to call his political opponents nuts, as in “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” so then why is he hanging with the 9/11 conspiracist Laura Loomer? Is he trying to lose the election?
We can’t believe we have to write this about a presidential candidate, but then Mr. Trump seems to like the company of Ms. Loomer, the 31-year-old online provocateur. She was backstage with the Trump team during this week’s debate with Kamala Harris and was in the spin room with the former President afterward.
She then flew on Mr. Trump’s plane to the anniversary memorials of 9/11 in New York City and the site of the Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania. Her attendance at these events was especially insulting since Ms. Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was “an inside job.” Does she think Osama bin Laden was a CIA front man?
Ms. Loomer is usually described in the press as “far right,” but that’s unfair to the fever swamps. On Sunday she posted on X that if Ms. Harris wins the election, “the White House will smell like curry,” a gibe against Ms. Harris’s Indian heritage.
She added that Ms. Harris’s speeches “will be facilitated via a call center.” U.S. companies often farm out their information lines to Indian firms, get it? We wonder if JD Vance’s Indian-American wife thinks that’s funny.
In 2018 Ms. Loomer chained herself to Twitter’s New York headquarters after the platform banned her. She suggested that Casey DeSantis, the wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, might have lied about having breast cancer: “I’ve never seen the medical records.” This week she smeared Sen. Lindsey Graham after he criticized her association with Mr. Trump.
All of this would be ignorable, except that others close to Mr. Trump say he is listening to Ms. Loomer’s advice. People in the Trump campaign are trying to get her out of the former President’s entourage, to no avail. Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Ms. Loomer is damaging the former President’s election chances.
As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis put it on Friday: “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”
The press is naturally having fun with all this and asked Mr. Trump about it on Friday. “Laura’s a supporter,” he said. “I have a lot of supporters.” He added that “she’s a strong person; she’s got strong opinions,” and he wondered why people are asking about her.
They’re asking because they know Mr. Trump’s association with Ms. Loomer feeds the concern among voters that Mr. Trump listens to crazy courtiers who flatter him and play to his vanity. Is this who the next four years are going to feature?
The problem here is deeper than Mr. Trump’s electoral prospects. A growing segment of the American right is populated by, and susceptible to, cranks and conspiracists. A movement that used to admire William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas Sowell now elevates a pseudo-historian who blames Winston Churchill for World War II and media personalities who sell falsehoods as a triumph for free speech.
This isn’t an intellectual or political movement that is going to win converts, nor will it deserve them.
wsj.com
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| To: Bill Wolf who wrote (12107) | 9/14/2024 8:44:26 AM | | From: Bill Wolf | | | | What to know about Laura Loomer, Trump's conspiracy theorist ally
Photo: Jacob M. Langston for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Far-right activist Laura Loomer has been at former President Trump's side this week as he campaigns, though the GOP candidate claimed Friday he's unaware of the conspiracy theories she's promoted.
Why it matters: Members of his own party are sounding alarms over Loomer's increasing presence in Trump's inner circle, concerned it's a sign he's moving deeper into a world of conspiracies and racism, Axios' Sophia Cai and Alex Thompson report.
Relationship with TrumpLoomer, who said this week she doesn't work for Trump, is a frequent guest of Mar-a-Lago and was backstage at Tuesday's presidential debate.
- She traveled with him the following day to New York and Pennsylvania.
What she's saying: "I'm simply a ride or die supporter of President Trump," Loomer said on X Friday. "I don't want anything in return. I just want to see him win."
- She added that she's been a fan of Trump's since she was working "undercover" in Hillary Clinton's campaign to expose "all types of dirty deeds."
- Loomer did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Trump was asked about Loomer and his relationship with her several times during a press conference in California on Friday, and said she's a "supporter" of him and his campaign.
- "I don't control Laura," he said. "Laura has to say what she wants. She's a free spirit."
- Pressed on whether he's aware of the conspiracy theories she espouses, he said "No, I don't know that much about it. ... I know she's a big fan of the campaign."
- He said in a post on his Truth Social platform later Friday: "I disagree with the statements she made but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me."
Conspiracy theories and racist commentaryLoomer, who has described herself as a "proud Islamophobe," has called the 9/11 attacks an "inside job." She also falsely claimed President Biden was behind the assassination attempt against Trump in July.
- This week, she peddled another baseless conspiracy theory on Haitian immigrants eating pets — a claim that Trump has also raised.
- Loomer, who has 1.2 million followers on X, also posted on the social media site saying if Vice President Harris is elected president, "the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center."
Rise to prominence as provocateur Loomer has worked for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media platform, among other right-wing outlets.
- In one 2015 stunt, she posed as a Hillary Clinton supporter to try to entrap campaign workers into accepting illegal cash donations.
- Her social media presence is full of inflammatory posts about immigrants and other groups, including one celebrating the deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. She denies being a racist, though she has described herself as pro-white nationalism.
- Her history of false claims include that multiple school shootings were staged.
- Getting banned from social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — for reasons including violating policies on hateful conduct and speech and for posting misinformation — helped build her notoriety, even as it cost her large followings on those platforms.
Failed races for CongressLoomer is a twice-failed congressional candidate in Florida.
- She ran in 2020 as the GOP nominee for the state's 21st congressional district and again in the Republican primary for the 11th congressional district in 2022.
Go deeper: Anatomy of a Trump conspiracy theory
axios.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/19/2024 9:13:27 AM | | | | | | C.E.O.s increasingly see a Harris victory
Recent polling suggests that Vice President Kamala Harris holds a slim lead over Donald Trump. A group of 60 business leaders convened by Jeff Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management in Washington is even more bullish about her chances of winning.
DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch got a first look at the results of Sonnenfeld’s survey, which also captures their views on the economy and on the volatile political climate. (In the survey, 37 percent of respondents identified as Republican, 32 percent as Democrat and about the same as independent.)
Eighty percent expected Harris to win. As well as the latest findings, C.E.O. surveys conducted by Sonnenfeld during the Trump era have shown how business leaders have been moving away from a tendency to support Republican candidates.
Executives were concerned about inflammatory rhetoric. When asked whether they believed hate speech was inciting violence, 68 percent of respondents said that they strongly agreed, while 26 percent said that they agreed. And 87 percent said that Trump should apologize for spreading debunked rumors about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.
They’re optimistic about the economy, with 84 percent of respondents saying that the economy was headed for a soft landing. About 10 percent said that they expected a significant recession, while six percent foresaw stagflation.
They generally favor tariffs. About 42 percent of respondents agreed that measures were needed to “protect vital U.S. industries from unfair foreign competition,” while 16 percent said that they strongly agreed.
Two-thirds of executives said that Nippon Steel should be allowed to buy U.S. Steel. The $15 billion deal has been held up by political and national security concerns.
The survey’s findings track with strong business leader support for Harris.
In other election news: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said it wouldn’t endorse either Harris or Trump, though many of the union’s West Coast chapters said that they would back Harris. |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/19/2024 10:03:04 AM | | | | | | Opinion
Commentary
Trump Acts as if He Has Time to Waste
He attacks Harris but can’t bring himself to focus on anything of consequence.
By Karl Rove
Sept. 18, 2024 5:34 pm ET
Every presidential campaign wrestles with how to use its three biggest resources—money, issues and time. The last is the most precious. Campaigns can always raise more money or generate more issues. But they can never create more time.
This is why Kamala Harris’s campaign wisely isn’t responding to many of Donald Trump’s attacks. The Republican, unfortunately, has been wasting precious time going after her on inconsequential matters. The Biden-Harris record on inflation, the border and world events remains relatively unmentioned. He’s letting her skate.
After Ms. Harris replaced Joe Biden in late July, Mr. Trump complained she hadn’t sat down for media interviews. “She’s not smart enough,” he said. Last Friday, Ms. Harris finally did a solo interview with a Philadelphia anchor. She’ll need to do more unscripted appearances going forward, but swing voters didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t sitting for them this summer. Her polling certainly didn’t suffer.
Mr. Trump also spent days complaining Ms. Harris hadn’t gone through any primaries, making her selection undemocratic. He called it “the first ever ‘Coup’ in America” and whined it was “not fair.” Team Harris ignored him.
Mr. Trump also complained on and on that Ms. Harris not only hadn’t laid out her agenda; she didn’t even have a policy page on her website. When she put one up Sept. 8, the Trump campaign called it “a late-night, half-ass wish list to her website to solve the problems SHE helped create over the past four years.” Again, swing voters don’t appear to be upset about this issue. Many were busy getting their kids back to school.
Mr. Trump chewed up more valuable time whining that Ms. Harris had changed her positions on fracking, the Green New Deal, the abolition of private health insurance and other progressive nostrums. “Everything that she believed three years ago,” Mr. Trump grumbled in their debate, “is out the window.” Undecided voters seem as if they couldn’t care less. They believe all politicians change opinions when advantageous, and Ms. Harris has moved toward their stances.
The Trump-Vance ticket has also wasted vital days with its self-owns. The campaign has yet to produce a single Ohio pet owner mourning Fluffy or Fido being barbecued by Haitian migrants. Mr. Trump also devoted Sunday to expressing hatred for Taylor Swift. Her many fans were doubtless angered and energized.
Ms. Harris has been content to let Mr. Trump fritter away the past eight weeks on these ridiculous attacks. Every day he focused on them—and on calling her a “Marxist, communist fascist” without concrete evidence—he neglected topics where he could inflict damage. He effectively buries what criticism he does make of her and Mr. Biden’s performance on the issues under mountains of minutiae and over-the-top rhetoric. If he pairs brief criticism on important points in a rally with a prolonged focus on weird things, what will get coverage? Weird every time.
It’s no surprise, then, that Ms. Harris has seen a significant improvement in her favorable numbers since reaching the top of the ticket. For the first time in three years, her average favorability rating is higher than her average unfavorability rating. That may lead to further improvement in head-to-head polling. She has also begun to close the gap with Mr. Trump in voters’ minds in terms of who’s better to handle the economy and border.
With less than seven weeks until Election Day—and voters in some states already receiving mail-in ballots—Mr. Trump better stop wasting time.
Fortunately for him, he may shortly get help from an unlikely corner. Mr. Biden plans what White House aides say will be a national tour to talk about his “epochal, economy-changing, history changing accomplishments.” Barnstorming America to praise Bidenomics last year made Democrats look out of touch. Repeating it now only makes Mr. Biden and his vice president a gigantic target.
Will Mr. Trump manage to hit the bull’s-eye? Drilling down on real issues in a sustained way may not appeal to the former star and co-producer of “The Apprentice.” But if he doesn’t, and instead continues failing to spell out his second term agenda, swing voters may swing away from him.
Few presidential candidates have had a better environment to run in than Mr. Trump. Voters are in a foul mood. The incumbent administration is historically unpopular and there’s a tremendous yearning for change. All these points give Mr. Trump a huge advantage and Ms. Harris a large disadvantage. But his lack of discipline is epic, and his rallies increasingly sound like therapy sessions.
Time isn’t his friend. It isn’t Ms. Harris’s either—for all Mr. Trump’s errors she’s up only 3 points in FiveThirtyEight’s national average. Let’s see who makes best use of the days they have left.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/21/2024 10:08:37 AM | | | | | | How the Super-Rich Signal Their Wealth to Each Other
Gauche display is out. The .1% use a subtler set of cues and signifiers to mark their place on the totem pole.
wsj.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 10/23/2024 7:57:19 AM | | | | | | As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator
John Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed that Donald Trump met the definition of a fascist.
.
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He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.
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He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic.
nytimes.com
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| From: Bill Wolf | 11/21/2024 7:23:19 AM | | | | | | Opinion
Commentary
Trump Sends Clowns to Cabinet Confirmation Circus
He has mishandled his nominations, and not only by picking Gaetz, Hegseth and Gabbard.
By Karl Rove
Nov. 20, 2024 4:31 pm ET
It started so quickly and so promisingly.
President-elect Donald Trump began announcing his team Nov. 7 by naming America’s first female White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
After a three-day break, Mr. Trump renewed staffing his administration the following Sunday by proposing an ambassador to the United Nations and a border czar.
The next day he announced his pick for Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
That Tuesday Mr. Trump revealed his choices for national security adviser, Central Intelligence Agency director, homeland security secretary, ambassador to Israel and co-chairmen of a new commission called the Department of Government Efficiency. Though his nomination that day of Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary raised questions, all these other picks were defensible. Overall, the president-elect was coming across as purposeful, focused and energetic.
Then came Wednesday. On Nov. 13, the future president picked for his attorney general Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. It is a catastrophically bad selection.
The nomination can’t be defended by referring to Mr. Gaetz’s record as an attorney. He has barely practiced law. He has no prosecutorial experience except as a prosecution’s target. And his law license was briefly suspended in 2021 because he stopped paying his bar-association dues.
Nor can the pick be justified because of his outstanding legislative record. He doesn’t have one. To the degree he’s known for doing anything on the House floor, it’s reportedly for sharing the details of his latest female conquests.
Then of course, there’s his turn on former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Gaetz’s behavior then makes appeals to party unity to confirm him now unpersuasive. He led seven other House GOP renegades to ally with 208 Democrats to remove Mr. McCarthy over the objections of 210 fellow Republicans.
There’s also the House Ethics Committee investigation into Mr. Gaetz for allegations that he used illicit drugs, paid to have sex with a minor and accepted improper gifts. Mr. Gaetz denies all these accusations. But his abrupt resignation from the House upon his nomination halted the committee’s process, and it’s unclear if it will release the report.
Rather than for any particular skill or competency, Mr. Gaetz was selected because he promised he would smite Mr. Trump’s enemies within the Justice Department and hound his opponents outside it. Vengeance is a powerful motive but not a sound foundation for public confidence in the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.
It’s likely that the only way Mr. Gaetz can be approved is if Mr. Trump expends enormous political capital to browbeat Senate Republicans into backing him. But no president has infinite sway, no matter how remarkable his electoral victory. Second-term chief executives tend to have even less.
Mr. Trump now faces the likelihood of contentious hearings featuring sensational charges that will distract from the good things his administration does. And Mr. Gaetz’s hearings won’t be the only circus act in town.
The confirmation proceedings for Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence nominee, Tulsi Gabbard, and Mr. Hegseth could also be messy and full of bad press. His in particular could entail unpleasant surprises, given that the Trump transition team was reportedly blindsided after his nomination by the news that he had reached a settlement with a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017. Mr. Hegseth denies any wrongdoing.
The former president made one other mistake with his nominations. By revealing his early choices through posts on Truth Social, Mr. Trump missed opportunities to deliver powerful messages to the American people about what he intends to do and why.
Imagine if he’d had a news conference rolling out secretary of state nominee Sen. Marco Rubio and national security adviser appointee Rep. Michael Waltz. He could have followed a day or two later with a public unveiling of border czar Tom Homan and his pick for Department of Homeland Security secretary, Gov. Kristi Noem. A day or so after that, he could have personally introduced Interior Secretary-designate Gov. Doug Burgum and Energy-Secretary-to-be Chris Wright to outline their plans to lower utility bills and the cost of gasoline.
These introductions could have let Americans hear what was important to Mr. Trump and learn more about the people he is putting in charge of key agencies. The campaign exploited social media brilliantly during the election. By contrast, the cabinet rollout seems pedestrian.
Inadequate vetting, impatience, disregard for qualifications and a thirst for revenge have created chaos and controversy for Mr. Trump before he’s even in office. The price for all this will be missed opportunities to shore up popular support for the incoming president. But at least it’ll make great TV.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
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