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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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TrumpGoebbels ...
LOS ANGELES — When drivers entered California recently from the borders with Arizona and Nevada, they were greeted with signs welcoming them to an “official sanctuary state” that is home to “felons” and “illegals.” It was a prank, but the message was clear: By entering California, they might as well have been entering foreign territory.
And in many ways it feels like that these days, as the growing divide between California and the Trump administration erupted this past week over a dizzying range of flash points, from immigration to taxes to recreational marijuana use.
What had been a rhetorical battle between a liberal state and a conservative administration is now a full-fledged fight.
Just as Californians were enjoying their first days of legal pot smoking, the Trump administration moved to enforce federal laws against the drug. On the same day, the federal government said it would expand offshore oil drilling, which California’s Senate leader called an assault on “our pristine coastline.”
When President Trump signed a law that would raise the tax bills of many Californians by restricting deductions, lawmakers in this state proposed a creative end-around — essentially making state taxes charitable contributions, and fully deductible. And California’s refusal to help federal agents deport undocumented immigrants prompted one administration official to suggest that state politicians should be arrested.
The clash between California and Mr. Trump and his supporters — between one America and another — began the morning after he won the presidency, when Kevin de León, the State Senate leader, and his counterpart in the Assembly, Anthony Rendon, said they “woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land.”
Since then the fight has metastasized into what could be the greatest contest over values between a White House and a state since the 1950s and 1960s, when the federal government moved to end segregation and expand civil rights.
Back then, of course, the ideologies and values at issue were reversed, as conservative Southerners, under the banner of states’ rights, fought violently to uphold white supremacy. In these times it is liberal California making the case for states’ rights, traditionally a Republican position.
“It seems like every day brings a new point of contention between two very different types of leadership,” said Jim Newton, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles.
And it does not end there: New laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 in California raised the minimum wage, allowed parents to withhold gender on birth certificates and strengthened what were already some of the toughest gun laws in the country by restricting ammunition sales and assault weapons, and barring school officials from carrying concealed weapons at work. Taken together, the measures are the surest signs yet of how California is setting itself apart from Washington — and many parts of America, too.
All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk)
On a winter's day (on a winter's day)
I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm)
If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.)
California dreamin' (California dreamin')
On such a winter's day
Denial ... No ...
WASHINGTON — One American politician is currently dominating the cultural landscape, from social media to late-night television. His poll numbers look great, his Twitter posts are often among the most read in the world, and with every utterance, his impassioned base of supporters reacts with a fervor more typical for celebrities than former civil servants.
Meet Barack Obama.
The former president left office last January with favorable approval ratings, but historians, former staffers, and political observers now say his societal standing has reached a new echelon — and it’s partly due to his successor.
Donald Trump spent much of his first year in office attempting to erase Obama’s policy legacy, but experts, backed by loads of anecdotal evidence, say Trump’s unconventional and often divisive conduct has actually deepened the connection to Obama for liberals and independents. As the current president spent 2017 buffeted by scandals and igniting Twitter controversies, Obama seemed to increasing numbers a throwback to simpler political times, more deeply admired by those who find Trump ever more deeply objectionable.
Most presidents — even the most unpopular ones — tend to grow in public esteem after they leave office. But only one of them may score an invite to the upcoming royal wedding in England; rumor has it that Obama may make the coveted list. Trump, after a string of tweets and remarks ill-received in post-Brexit Britain, may not.
...
Polling shows Obama’s favorability rating has hit heights unseen since his first inauguration. The latest polling compiled by HuffPost had Obama’s favorability rating near 60 percent, up almost 15 points from when he entered his final year in office. A Gallup survey last month found Obama was the man that Americans admired most in the world, marking one of the few years the sitting president didn’t win (Trump came in second in the survey of American adults). He was recently serenaded on “Saturday Night Live” with a song titled “Come Back Barack,” which became so popular the network reportedly contemplated a commercial release. His end-of-the-year favorite songs list was the talk of music blogs, and he was just announced as the first guest for late-night TV host David Letterman’s highly anticipated return broadcast.
Beyond the nation’s shores, there are some places around the world, though not many, where Trump is more popular than Obama. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey polled 37 nations across the world about their opinions of the two presidents, and all but two countries rated Obama higher.
The ones that preferred Trump? Israel by 7 percentage points and Russia by 42.
From his days as a tabloid staple to his scandal-ridden campaign, Donald Trump operated under the rubric that there is no such thing as bad publicity. As long as the focus was on Trump – and as long as a ruthless team of NDA-granting lawyers could help him buttress the blows – all attention was welcome. Mr. Trump could not be shamed, for he had no shame; he could not lose, because he'd rewrite the rules. Lies were always truths for Donald Trump.
Pundits who expected Mr. Trump to become presidential found instead that the office exacerbated his worst tendencies: the narcissism was now backed by executive power, and the media now had no choice but to cover him constantly as the leader of the free world. Under political pressure but still craving the spotlight, Mr. Trump controlled the press by communicating almost entirely through Twitter, a one-sided relationship that continues to this day.
But there was a weakness in this formulation. In 2017, Mr. Trump encountered a form of publicity that was actually toxic: the threat of an indictment. And it is in the shadow of the federal investigation into the Kremlin ties and financial malfeasance of the president and his team that Michael Wolff's new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, emerged.
...
The takeaway, instead, is that Donald Trump is a moron. While this may be true in terms of his geopolitical acumen, it is not the full picture. He may be purposefully ignorant of policy and emotionally volatile, but he understands power and spin, and his 40-year history of dodging criminal prosecution and manipulating the media testifies to a certain kind of skill. It is not the kind of skill that Mr. Trump – or apparently Michael Wolff – wants highlighted.
The "Trump is too much of a neophyte to have knowingly committed a crime" narrative is a favourite of the GOP, and they have been spouting it since the spring. Fire and Fury gives it renewed life, as do Trump's tweets on Saturday, in which he proclaimed in an ostentatiously moronic way that he's not a moron. As evidence mounts in the Mueller probe, Mr. Trump seems to be casting himself as a dupe instead of a deceiver.
In a typical passage, Mr. Wolff describes Mr. Trump as "a baffled president plaintively wanting to know 'What's going on?'" Odds are good that Donald Trump knows a lot more than he wants you to know, and Fire and Fury, while personally humiliating, is politically helpful. Do not be fooled by the president who cried Wolff.
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