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      Peril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning

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      BooksPeril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning Behind the headlines about Gen Milley, China and the threat of nuclear war lies a sobering read about democracy in dangerLloyd GreenSat 18 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 18 Sep 2021 01.02 EDTDonald Trump is out of a job but far from gone and forgotten. The 45th president stokes the lie of a rigged election while his rallies pack more wallop than a Sunday sermon and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.Melania Trump like Marie Antoinette, says former aide in hotly awaited bookRead more“We won the election twice!” Trump shouts. His base has come to believe. They see themselves in him and are ready to die for him – literally. Covid vaccines? Let the liberals take them.Deep red Mississippi leads in Covid deaths per capita. Florida’s death toll has risen above 50,000. This week alone, the Sunshine State lost more than 2,500. Then again, a century and a half ago, about 258,000 men died for the Confederacy rather than end slavery. “Freedom?” Whatever.One thing is certain: against this carnage-filled backdrop Bob Woodward’s latest book is aptly titled indeed.Written with Robert Costa, another Washington Post reporter, Peril caps a Trump trilogy by one half of the team that took down Richard Nixon. As was the case with Fear and Rage, Peril is meticulously researched. Quotes fly off the page. The prose, however, stays dry.This is a curated narrative of events and people but it comes with a point of view. The authors recall Trump’s admission that “real power [is] fear”, and that he evokes “rage”.Peril quotes Brad Parscale, a discarded campaign manager, about Trump’s return to the stage after his ejection from the White House.“I don’t think he sees it as a comeback,” Parscale says. “He sees it as vengeance.”Parscale knows of whom and what he speaks. His words are chilling and sobering both.The pages of Peril are replete with the voices of Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Each seeks to salvage a tarnished reputation, Milley’s somewhat, Barr’s badly.In June 2020, wearing combat fatigues, Milley marched with Trump across Lafayette Square, a historic space outside the White House which had been forcibly cleared of anti-racism protesters so the president could stage a photo op at a church. The general regrets the episode. Others, less so.In an earlier Trump book, I Alone Can Fix It, Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, also of the Post, captured Milley telling aides just days before the attack on the Capitol on 6 January, “This is a Reichstag moment.” This week, in the aftermath of reports based on Peril of Milley’s contacts with China in the waning days of the Trump administration, seeking to reassure an uncertain adversary, Joe Biden came to the general’s defense.As for Barr, for 20 months he bent the justice department to the president’s will. Fortunately, he refused in the end to break it. Overturning the election was a far greater ask than pouring dirt over the special counsel’s report on Trump and Russia or running interference for Paul Manafort, Trump’s convicted-then-pardoned campaign manager. Barr, it seems, wants back into the establishment – having smashed his fist in its eye.Woodward and Costa recount Barr’s Senate confirmation hearing, in which he promised to allow Robert Mueller to complete the Russia investigation, Trump’s enraged reaction and an intervention by his wife, Melania. According to the author, Barr may have owed his job to her.Emmett Flood, then counsel to Trump, conveyed to Barr his mood.“The president’s going crazy,” he said. “You said nice things about Bob Mueller.”Melania was having none of it, reportedly scolding her husband: “Are you crazy?”In a vintagely Trumpian moment, she also said Barr was “right out of central casting”.In another intriguing bit of pure political dish, Mitch McConnell is seen in the Senate cloakroom, joking at Trump’s expense.“Do you know why [former secretary of state Rex] Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’?” the Senate Republican leader asks.“Because he called him a ‘fucking moron’.”By contrast, McConnell has kind words for Biden – a man he is dedicated to rendering a one-term president. America’s cold civil war goes on. Some, sometimes, still send messages across no man’s land.Woodward and Costa show Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, the goddess of alternative facts, reminding Trump that he turned voters off in his second election. In 2020, Trump underperformed among white voters without a college degree and ran behind congressional Republicans.“Get back to basics,” Conway tells him. Stop with the grievances and obsessing over the election. From the looks of things, Trump has discounted her advice. Conway has a book of her own due out in 2022. Score-settling awaits.Ending somewhere near the political present, Woodward and Costa shed light on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Senator Lindsey Graham with it.In office, Trump affixed his signature to a document titled “Memorandum for the Acting Secretary of Defense: Withdrawal from Somalia and Afghanistan”. It declared: “I hereby direct you to withdraw all US forces from the Federal Republic of Somalia no later than 31 December 2020 and from the Islamic Republican of Afghanistan no later than 15 January 2021.”Steve Bannon prepped Jeffrey Epstein for CBS interview, Michael Wolff claimsRead moreApparatchiks were baffled as to where the memo had come from. Then they blocked it. Trump folded when confronted.As for Graham, the South Carolina Republican and presidential golfing buddy expresses “hate” for both Trump and Biden over Afghanistan.Graham and Biden were friends once. As Graham has repeatedly trashed Hunter Biden, expect the fissure between him and the new president to prove to be long lasting. As for Graham and Trump, it’s a question of who needs whom more at any given moment. With John McCain gone, it’s a good bet Graham will latch on to an alpha dog again.Fittingly, in their closing sentence, Woodward and Costa ponder the fate of the American experiment itself.“Could Trump work his will again? Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?“Peril remains.”TopicsBooksBob WoodwardPolitics booksUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS CongressreviewsReuse this content More

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      Exxon and BP called to testify on climate after ‘troubling’ new documents

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      Climate crimesExxonMobilExxon and BP called to testify on climate after ‘troubling’ new documentsCongressman calls documents related to the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to discredit climate science ‘very concerning’ Supported byAbout this contentChris McGrealThu 16 Sep 2021 11.13 EDTLast modified on Thu 16 Sep 2021 14.59 EDTUS congressional investigators say they have uncovered “very concerning” new documents about ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign to discredit climate science.Representative Ro Khanna, a leading critic of the petroleum industry on the House oversight committee, said the documents came to light ahead of a hearing next month to question the heads of large oil companies about their industry’s long history of undermining the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating.Khanna declined to discuss the information beyond describing it as “very troubling facts and some very concerning documents”.On Thursday, the House oversight committee sent out letters summoning the heads of four firms – Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP – to testify on 28 October.The letter to Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said the “fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits” while devastating communities, ravaging the natural world and costing taxpayers billions of dollars.“We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change,” the letter said.The hearings follow a secret recording of an Exxon lobbyist earlier this year describing the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.“The big oil companies owe the American people an explanation,” said Khanna, a California Democrat who chairs the environmental subcommittee. “They need to admit what they’ve done on climate misinformation in the past, they need to acknowledge what they’re currently doing in terms of spending dark money, and they need to commit 100% that they’re going to stop any climate disinformation campaign.”The congressman said it was “unbelievable” that oil industry leaders have yet to face questioning by Congress about the climate crisis. He likened the hearings to the groundbreaking appearance of seven tobacco company chiefs before Congress in 1994 to expose what the cigarette companies knew about the hazards of smoking. He said the oversight committee is currently being advised by some of those involved in those hearings.Khanna said he wants to hear from the leaders of the oil giants not only about past actions but their continued funding of front groups and thinktanks spreading disinformation about climate science, the covert funding of denialist advertising and the use of lobby groups to oppose green legislation.“The magnifying glass is particularly important now so that they don’t interfere with the Congress’s agenda to get all kinds of legislation. We will not tackle the climate crisis successfully if we don’t first put an end to climate disinformation,” he said.The committee is also requesting that the heads of two major trade groups closely aligned with the oil industry, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the US Chamber of Commerce, answer questions about their role in the coverup.Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, is suing API, alleging that it “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse told the Guardian earlier this year that API was acting as a front for the industry by allowing oil firms to claim they were committed to addressing climate change while API lobbied against green policies in Congress. Whitehouse accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale”.In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.Similarly, the US Chamber of Commerce has helped downplay the climate crisis and oppose legislation to curb greenhouse emissions.In 2015, the Columbia Journalism School and the Los Angeles Times uncovered a raft of Exxon documents held at the University of Texas that showed the company worked to undermine climate science by promoting denialism.Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate”.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsExxonMobilClimate crimesBPRoyal Dutch ShellChevronOilUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Congress is on the cusp of passing the most pivotal bill in years – if we make them | Rebecca Solnit

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      OpinionUS politicsCongress is on the cusp of passing the most pivotal bill in years – if we make themRebecca SolnitThe dull-sounding ‘budget reconciliation’ may provide universal childcare and preschool, repeal fossil fuel subsidies and create a Climate Conservation Corps Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.15 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 09.04 EDTWhat if the fate of the world was complicated and also, to most people, a bit boring? What if we got a chance to change the world or even save it, and hardly anyone noticed? I hardly dare to start this essay with the phrase “budget reconciliation” lest you be inspired to click elsewhere right away, but stick with me. This is important and also includes a Britney Spears sighting. Because the budget reconciliation bill is maybe the most important thing happening right now, in the long run, but the least dramatic, at least in how it’s being reported. By important I mean significant, for all of us, for the long-term future, for the lives of ordinary people and for the climate.Republicans once called government the problem – now they want to run your life | Robert ReichRead moreWhen it comes to news, interesting and important are too often adversaries. Maybe it’s partly about human nature. We evolved to pay attention to sudden and dramatic action and small groups and charismatic individuals, to violence and threat and tangible stuff, not to policy maneuvers and pie charts and economic indicators. Or maybe it’s that the news media knows how to cover wars and explosions and scandals and football scores better than legislation that might change the world or meaningful shifts in beliefs and practices. The sudden wins out over the slow, the simple over the complex, the concentrated over things diffused over large areas.I wrote here about the way the collapse of one building in Florida seemed to get more coverage than the heat dome covering much of North America for a few deadly days in July, during which well over a thousand people died, shellfish by the billion died along the north-west coast, fires broke out, a town burned down, millions suffered and records were broken by leaps and bounds. It was too dispersed and too complex a story to be told in the quick, compact formats of the news. The heat dome was not just a huge disaster, but a sign that the climate was getting more chaotic faster than anticipated.So wherever you were, at least by implication, it affected you. But it was drowned out by stories that didn’t. Some stories about a famous or intriguing person do have wider repercussions – Britney Spears’s recent struggle for self-determination has given us all a crash course in how abusive the US conservatorship system can be, and how well that intersects with everyday misogyny. Better yet, celebrities like Jane Fonda can function like spotlights, directing our attention to inherently important things, in her case via her Firehouse Fridays, to climate issues and how to do good work on them.By important I mean things that affect us – us the readers, us the public, us the life on Earth, now and to come. By that measure climate is more important than anything else. When it comes to climate, the stuff that will affect your life and mine and ours is often quite complicated, which can segue smoothly into byzantine or dull, which can merge into the overlooked and ignored. Or it’s slow-moving and undramatic, like the amount of clean power installed and the price of solar panels and the bits of legislation, say, banning gas hookups in new construction or mandating energy efficiency. Every once in a while, it’s like the Line 3 conflict, with an obvious villain in the pipeline company, heroes in the form of the indigenous-led water protectors, and a lot of dramatic action. But a lot of times it is legislation and incrementalism and budgets and big data.The budget reconciliation bill could be the single most important piece of climate legislation to date in this country, and it’s not certain whether it will pass or what exactly will be in it. Public pressure matters, which is why its low profile is maddening. The budget reconciliation bill is a cornucopia. It will probably include universal childcare and preschool! Medicare expansion! Raising taxes on the wealthy! Gobs of climate action that generates heaps of jobs! Possibly a Climate Conservation Corps, if, as Katie Porter pointed out in a recent talk, people demand it loudly and strongly enough! Repealing fossil fuel subsidies! None of this matters if it doesn’t pass (and there is some drama in the ways Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are making themselves into obstructionists demanding to be placated).The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, says that the climate provisions in the bill would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, doing most of the heavy lifting to get us back in line with our 2015 Paris climate pledge. It’s kind of a Green New Deal and it’s a big deal and it’s complicated, and there should be riots in the streets to support it and push it through. If the colossal carbon-dioxide contributor that is the USA finally gets it together, other nations are likely to follow (though of course many are already far ahead of us).Even though there are a lot of solid articles on the budget reconciliation process and its goals and obstacles and I get some mail from politicians – notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – about it, I see very little talk about it among the people I know and the people I follow. Maybe we’re telling the story wrong. Maybe we need more pieces about how the US Chamber of Commerce and fossil fuel industry would like your grandmother to die of heatstroke and the fossil fuel industry is conspiring for your cousin to drown in a subway. Legislation is what will keep them from doing so.The budget reconciliation doesn’t fix all our woes. But it does tremendous work, and there is hardly a better place for public attention right now – or a more alarming shortfall of same.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist and the author of Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses
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