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      Confronting America’s Drive to Collective Amnesia

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      It seems that there is a deep pent-up desire in America to avoid meaningful change at all cost. It is hard enough to confront issues honestly and forthrightly in the best of times. But it is nearly impossible to do so in an environment that prizes consensus over responsibility. The vocabulary of avoidance is everywhere and reaching epic proportions.

      Nowhere is this more obvious and dangerous than the way in which the vaccinated dance around the unvaccinated. If you are paying attention, there is simply no good excuse not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in America, with some very minor medically-sound exceptions. But instead of just saying that in a straightforward way and then demanding policies and programs that mandate vaccinations, we are acting like vaccinations are some prize for knocking over a stack of steel bottles at a carnival stand: “Step right up, little lady, a quick flick of the needle and you are on your way with this keepsake stuffed elephant. Bring that big guy along with you, and you win the daily double, the stuffed elephant and a genuine MAGA hat.”

      Biden’s Pirates of the Caribbean

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      It is time to stop begging ignorant people to do something smart, and selfish people to do something selfless. How about: “Step right up little lady and show me your vaccination certificate if you want to eat here. Same for you big guy.” Or: “Mom, your kid wants to play high school football, but he hasn’t turned in the required COVID vaccination certificate.” Or my personal favorite: “I would have invited you to join us, but you are not vaccinated, and adding someone so stupid and selfish to the group seemed like a bad idea that would only serve to validate your stupidity and selfishness.”

      Validating willful ignorance is never a good idea, but it is a really bad idea when doing so puts people at risk. Further, most of us usually try to avoid truly selfish people, so let’s double down now to contribute to the common good. For impact, we have to be willing to tell the ignorant and selfish what we are doing and why. We have to be willing to demand that our institutions meet this challenge as well. It is beyond time for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to aggressively mandate vaccinations wherever they are authorized to do so.

      Another useful component of the avoidance vocabulary is the word “colleague.” The word seems to imply someone with whom you work, a co-worker. It shouldn’t apply to the SOB in your midst who seeks to undo everything you are trying to do. So, stop using the word “colleague” for those you believe to be willfully ignorant, selfish, dangerous and/or just plain too stupid to get out of your way. This is particularly so in the public arena, where every moron seems to be somebody’s colleague during any discourse — “My colleagues are unable to see that making it harder for black people to vote is racist behavior.” They could either not be your “colleague” or not be “racist,” but they shouldn’t ever be both.

      Normal vs. New Normal

      How about “normal” and “new normal” to make things sound just great as we surge forward as a nation? Returning to “normal” only works if your “normal” was fine with you. It avoids the uncomfortable truth that many people don’t want to return to their “normal,” because it sucked. As for a “new normal,” it is hard to imagine a less precise way of confronting the critical need for change to actually achieve a more perfect union. It surely creates an easy path to avoiding any measured discussion about hunger, poverty, access to meaningful health care, access to quality education, rampant gun violence, and racial and social justice, among other difficult issues.

      So, when I hear people say they want a “new normal,” it sounds a lot to me like they are talking about some vision of a better world that will miraculously emerge if we hold hands and pray a lot. What is needed is not a “new normal” but a new and transformed America where eliminating poverty is more important than giving up a tax break for your vacation home, where health care isn’t rationed by insurance companies and their medical allies, where school buildings and the teachers in them provide the same resources to black children that are provided to white children, and no child, not a single one, goes to bed hungry in America.

      Embed from Getty Images

      That’s the America that I want to see and to which there is so much resistance. “Normal” and “new normal” are comfort food concepts to spare the already comfortable the discomfort of sacrifice for the common good.

      And then just when you think you might be getting at least some Americans to turn their attention to a better life on Earth for the community of man, along comes billionaire space “tourism” to further distract a population grasping for the most banal of distractions. If you can’t afford Disneyland, an RV or even a trip to Taco Bell, America’s wealthy can give you the illusion of tourism in space. It is truly heartening to hear the mega brats talk so lovingly of opening up space to the masses, while working so hard to avoid sharing their wealth with those same masses. And take note that this illusion is getting enough attention and gushing goodwill to give us another touchstone on the golden road to “normal.”

      While I await my economy center seat with Kim Kardashian on one side and Martha Stewart on the other, I am getting pumped up for the debates to come as schools are about to open and the parental handwringing season of rage is commencing. This is so much fun, because in America’s dysfunctional democracy school decisions are seen as local decisions, thereby ensuring that everything from masks to midriffs, from black books to white books, from defunding teachers to defunding cops and the like, will be on the agenda somewhere everyday beginning now.

      This will be fine theater that is inconsistent with informed dialogue and ensures further avoidance of confronting systemic issues of import. Optics again will win the day, and the symbolism of preserving norms will overwhelm the content of change. The real losers this time will be the kids who will have to watch their parents stuff social, political, economic and moral genies back into the bottles from which they have again emerged, while further polluting the minds of the same kids they say they are trying to save.

      It seems beyond hope that all of this avoidance of meaningful change and the vocabulary that enables that avoidance will engender an equal and opposite reaction. The reason is simple: Only the forgotten are seeking meaningful change while so many in the rest of the nation want nothing more than continued amnesia.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s Pirates of the Caribbean

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      On July 12, following an outburst of protest by Cubans responding to a raft of ills that plague the island, the White House issued US President Joe Biden’s message of apparent solidarity. “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Clarion call:

      The sound of a high-pitched trumpet calling troops to battle in the 14th century or, when evoked by a politician in the 21st century, the sound of a high-pitched ideologue pretending (but not necessarily intending) to go to battle in the name of a claimed ideal

      Contextual Note

      Whenever an American politician evokes the question of Cuba, one can be sure that clichés will abound. The Oxford Dictionary defines “clarion” as “A shrill-sounding trumpet with a narrow tube, formerly much used as a signal in war.” This sounds like an apt description of today’s US politicians. They know that to win elections they must always sound shrill and ready for war, in their intentions if not in their tone.

      Biden uses the cliché of promising to “stand with the Cuban people.” He then invokes “the tragic grip of the pandemic,” but somehow forgets to mention the far more serious and tragic grip of a 60-year US blockade of Cuba that cut off the nation and its people from the global economy, forcing the regime to improvise a form of near autarchy in an increasingly interconnected world. For much of that time, Cubans depended for their survival on a lifeline from the Soviet Union (later Russia) and various assorted US enemies, such as Venezuela.

      Like Lewis Carrol’s Walrus about to eat the oysters he has befriended, Biden explains how he “deeply sympathizes” with the Cuban people. He offers Cuba’s leaders this advice: “The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.” Does he seriously expect them to take on board his wise counsel? Can the president of a nation that made 638 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro pretend to be someone who can be trusted to “hear their people and serve their needs?”

      Embed from Getty Images

      The statement’s litany of clichés continues with the claim that this is a “vital moment.” Biden optimistically envisions a counterrevolution provoked by the intense suffering imposed on the Cuban people as a result of the combined force of a pandemic, an endless embargo and US sanctions. These have created a situation beyond any government’s control. Biden’s irony then intensifies with the implicit reproach, “rather than enriching themselves.” Spoken by the president of a recognized plutocracy and the father of Hunter Biden, this remark merits some serious laughs.

      Biden clearly knows something about politicians enriching themselves and their families. A growing trove of evidence reveals that, during the years of Joe Biden’s vice presidency, his son Hunter demonstrated exceptional skill trading on his father’s name, apparently with dad’s complicity. Hunter Biden’s lifestyle alone bears witness to the moral vision of a family and a class culture with few scruples about pushing ethical and legal limits in the interest of “enriching themselves.”

      Forbes states that Joe Biden’s net worth is “only an estimated $8 million.” That puts him above the poverty line but, in the eyes of most of the billionaire elite, classifies him as a loser. To maintain his image of “middle-class Joe,” Biden may have been motivated to seek ways of enriching his son, perhaps as a ploy to dodge inheritance tax. He even apparently relied on his son’s generosity to cover some of the domestic costs his $8 million fortune didn’t permit him to cover. Hunter’s net worth is unknown, but Newsweek says it “could be millions.” Such a paltry fortune for someone with his surname and admittedly illustrious career (drug addiction and adultery apart) may help to explain Hunter’s sudden need to sell his artwork at exorbitant prices.

      CNN reports that “the White House has been forced to deal with ethics questions about people buying the artwork for huge sums as a way to curry favor with President Joe Biden.” That is not only a fair description of the context but fits with the whole pattern of Hunter Biden’s career. Wondering whether his art had value, CNN interviewed art critic Sebastian Smee, who judged that Biden’s “work has the feeling of an afterthought.” It didn’t need “to be made, except perhaps as a therapeutic exercise.” His work is now expected to command “prices ranging from $75,000 to $500,000.”

      So how does this compare with Cuban politicians’ enriching themselves? The website Celebsblurb weighed in on the question of current president Miguel Diaz Canel’s fortune without providing a figure. “Being active in the political field since 1993, Miguel has earned a handsome amount of salary” the site claims. He enjoys “a lavish lifestyle with the aid of his enormous net worth.” Fidel Castro’s fortune was evaluated at under “about $900 million,” which is impressive, but he fell short of becoming a billionaire. According to the website Wealthy Persons, Fidel’s brother, Raul, who reigned for several years, reached $150 million, nearly 20 times that of Joe Biden.

      Could Biden be expressing his jealousy when talking about Cuban leaders enriching themselves? They have certainly outpaced the American president. Running a communist country pays, especially if you’re good at preserving a precarious stability in the face of a permanent assault by a neighboring superpower. If you think of the Cuban people as the board of directors of Cuba Inc., their compensation scheme reflects their CEO’s performance. Another way of calculating Fidel’s claim to such a fortune could be by putting a price of $1.4 million on each foiled CIA assassination attempt. As ransoms of national leaders go, that is a very modest figure.

      “Working-class Joe” seems to have secured a comfortable situation for his family, even if he can’t compete with “revolutionary Fidel.” But Castro’s fortune may have had less to do with personal greed than with a trend that affects all fragile developing nations — the need their leaders feel to secure the degree of financial autonomy that allows them to counter the inevitable initiatives of hostile superpowers to unseat them. In contrast with Cuba, US plutocracy has refined the art of spreading wealth around the entire oligarchic class. Politicians merit the millions they receive from the billionaires. That’s enough to ensure their loyal obedience. On the US political chessboard, the politicians are the pawns.

      Historical Note

      In the past week, US media outlets have expressed their hope that Cuba’s economic disaster may provoke the always desired outcome known as regime change. The current crisis in Cuba is attributable to the combined effects of a decades-long embargo, supplementary punitive sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and maintained by Biden, and a government with limited influence on the international stage and insufficient management skills. The overthrow of the current government thanks to pressure and assistance from the US would simply produce chaos and possibly a civil war on a scale similar to what Libya has experienced for the past 10 years.

      Therein lies the biggest mystery concerning Biden’s Cuba policy: With all his experience dating back to the Vietnam War, including decades of sanctions, invasions and assassinations, Biden has seen enough history to understand that US wars and sanctions have produced mountains of tragedy and absolutely nothing to rejoice about other than pleasuring the military-industrial complex. The much younger Barack Obama seemed at least to have partially learned the lesson of history when he sought to open the dialogue with Cuba.

      US democracy fatally and repeatedly produces the same consistent effect. In 2008, Americans elected Obama in the hope (his word) of ending the Bush administration’s wars. Obama maintained those wars and expanded them to at least three other nations. In 2020, the electorate voted to overturn Trump’s radical reengineering of US foreign policy (supposedly dictated by Russia). Americans voted in Biden to overturn Trump’s legacy. What has their champion done so far? He has prolonged it and, in some cases, intensified it. This is bad news for Cuba, but possibly even worse news for the US.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Priscilla Johnson McMillan obituary

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      US newsPriscilla Johnson McMillan obituaryJournalist, author and historian who knew both President John F Kennedy and his alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald Michael CarlsonMon 19 Jul 2021 04.54 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Jul 2021 05.38 EDTPriscilla Johnson McMillan, who has died aged 92 after a fall, was the only person who could claim to have known both President John F Kennedy and his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. As a young college graduate, Johnson was befriended by Senator Kennedy while she worked in his office; a few years later she interviewed the young Oswald soon after he showed up in Moscow wishing to defect to the Soviet Union.After the assassination, Johnson was given exclusive access to Oswald’s Russian widow, Marina, and her ensuing book, Marina and Lee (1977), became a key document in establishing Oswald as a lone disturbed assassin. It also prompted many researchers to point to Johnson’s close ties to the US intelligence community, not least when she received similarly exclusive access to Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, when she defected to the US, and worked with her through translating her bestselling 1967 memoir Twenty Letters to a Friend.Johnson’s career grew from her unexpected interest in Russian language and culture. Her father, Stuart Johnson, a financier, was heir to a textile fortune; he was her mother, Mary Eunice Clapp’s, second husband. Patricia was born in Glen Cove, New York, and grew up on the family’s estate, Kaintuck Farm, in Locust Valley, Long Island.She was educated at Brearley school in New York, then at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, one of the elite “seven sisters” female colleges, where she became the first graduate majoring in Russian studies and was active in the United World Federalists (UWF), dedicated to effective world cooperation, primarily to prevent nuclear war.After an MA at Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University), in 1953 she joined the staff of the newly elected senator Kennedy, researching French Indochina. They became friends; he would call her regularly for chats. She denied any romance, “I didn’t love him; he was mesmerising but he was just someone I knew.” She was rejected when she applied to join the CIA, ostensibly because of her ties to the UWF. Oddly, her interviewer was Cord Meyer, who in 1947 had been the first president of the UWF; now he headed the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, aimed at influencing media. She did translation work for a review of the Soviet press, spending much time in Russia. On Kennedy’s recommendation, she received a grant to study the Soviet legal system, and again did translation work at the US embassy. She met Truman Capote, travelling with a US production of Porgy and Bess, and is mentioned in his book The Muses Are Heard.In 1958 she joined the North American News Alliance (NANA), and in November 1959 arrived in Moscow just a day after Aline Mosby of United Press International had filed a story on Oswald’s defection. The US consul John McVickar, himself a CIA man, recommended she interview Oswald, who was at her hotel; her report on the four-hour session appeared in NANA-affiliated papers.Mosby noted that Johnson lived in the Metropol, unlike other press in their state-assigned office/residence, saying “she was a very nice person and had good connections”. Johnson was one of many journalists expelled from Russia in the wake of the Russians shooting down of an American U2 spy plane; Oswald had been a radar operator at the Atsugi, Japan base from which U2s flew.She became a visiting fellow at the Russian research centre at Harvard, returning to Russia in 1962 and writing a memorable piece for Harper’s magazine about the Soviet writer Boris Pasternak’s funeral. On her return she was interviewed by Donald Jameson, the head of the CIA’s Soviet Russia division, who described her in a memo as someone who could “be encouraged to write the articles we want … but it’s important to avoid making her think she’s being used as a propaganda tool.”Then, in November 1963, came the news of Kennedy’s assassination by Oswald; Johnson gasped as she realised: “I know that boy.” Her 1959 profile of Oswald was immediately reprinted, but with a few changes, including a final line that did not appear in the original: “This was the stuff of which fanatics are made.”In 1964, when Marina was being held incommunicado, under threat of deportation, Johnson moved in with her. With her Russian and knowledge of Lee, she won Marina’s trust, but her book did not appear until 1977. While researching it, Johnson co-edited a collection of essays, Khrushchev and The Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture (1965). She returned to Kaintuck, where Alliluyeva lived while they worked on her memoir.Johnson married the journalist George McMillan in 1966; he covered the civil rights movement in the south, and published, in 1977, Making of an Assassin, showing how Martin Luther King’s alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, acted alone. They divorced in 1980.Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of John F Kennedy finally appeared, coincidentally, just as the House select committee on assassinations reopened the case. Johnson testified in closed session; large sections of her HSCA testimony are redacted whenever she is asked about her intelligence connections. Her book was a major influence on Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale; Mailer blamed Oswald’s killing of the president on his sexual frustration with Marina, and jealousy of JFK. By this time Marina began to distance herself from Johnson’s conclusions, saying “it was up to Priscilla to fish out all the facts and everything”.In 1988, Johnson added another line to her Oswald interview, telling Dan Rather of CBS that Oswald had told her: “I want to give the people of the US something to think about.” Eventually, Marina would claim she was “misled by the ‘evidence’ presented to me by government authorities … I am now convinced Lee was an FBI informant and did not kill President Kennedy”.Priscilla’s obituary of Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists led to her being asked to write about the hearings that declared J Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb, a security risk when he opposed building an H-bomb.She received extensive access to the archives of the Los Alamos Atomic Laboratory, but as with Marina and Lee, the research overwhelmed the writing. When The Ruin of J Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race finally appeared in 2005, it was a year after a massive Oppenheimer biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin had won a Pulitzer prize. But her portrayal of the political shift that left Oppenheimer on the outside won praise.On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Marina and Lee was reissued. Johnson wrote of Oswald’s “unfitness for any conspiracy outside his own head”. Oddly enough, the description also would suit a hapless someone who was, as Oswald himself claimed, a “patsy”.Johnson is survived by a niece, Holly-Katharine Johnson, who is working on her biography.TopicsUS newsUS politicsJohn F KennedyRussiaNew YorkCIATruman CapoteobituariesReuse this content More

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      Hatchet Man review: Bill Barr as Trump loyalist – and fairly typical AG

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      BooksHatchet Man review: Bill Barr as Trump loyalist – and fairly typical AGElie Honig excoriates the man who ran interference over Russia. He might have considered attorneys general gone before

      I Alone Can Fix It review: Trump as wannabe Führer
      Lloyd GreenSun 18 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 18 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTIn his 22 months as attorney general under Donald Trump, Bill Barr played blocking back and spear-catcher for the 45th president.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreOnly when Trump tried to steal the election did Barr grow a conscience. Otherwise, he was a close approximation to Roy Cohn, Trump’s notorious and long-dead personal attorney. Cohn and Barr even attended the same high school and college. But in the end, much as Trump ditched Cohn as he lay dying of Aids, Trump discarded Barr.Elie Honig surmises that Barr’s quest for power and desire to turn the clock back on secular modernity girded his disdain for democratic norms and legal conventions that came to stand in his way.Honig is an ex-prosecutor who became a CNN commentator. His first book, subtitled “How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department”, catalogs Barr’s misdeeds across 288 pages, interspersed with flashbacks to Honig’s career as an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York.Honig successfully prosecuted more than 100 members and associates of organized crime, including bosses and members of the Gambino and Genovese families. More recently, he drew a comparison between such “mafia cases” and Trump’s Goodfellas-tinged lexicon.“Calling somebody who provides information to law enforcement a ‘rat’ is straight up mob boss language,” Honig tweeted in late 2018.Suffice to say, the author’s anger toward Barr is real and Hatchet Man is thorough. Barr’s transgressions are laid out in black and white.In March 2019, less than two months after succeeding Jeff Sessions, Barr released his own preview of Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow – a preview notably untethered to fact. Later, Barr put his fingers on the scale in connection with the sentencing of Roger Stone and the early release of Paul Manafort. For a self-professed law-and-order AG, who also served under George HW Bush but who had never prosecuted a criminal case, these were unusual steps, to say the least.The federal bench came to question Barr’s credibility. In an opinion tied to the release of a memo related to Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote that both Barr and the Department of Justice had been “disingenuous”.The Biden administration is appealing against the ruling. Preserving presidential authority takes precedence over the public’s right to know. Buffing DoJ’s halo can be left for another day.Another of Barr’s gambits, seeking to toss Michael Flynn’s guilty plea (for lying to the FBI while national security adviser) before he received a pardon, became a lightning rod. US district judge Emmett Sullivan questioned Barr’s legal gymnastics.“In view of the government’s previous argument in this case that Mr Flynn’s false statements were ‘absolutely material’ because his false statements ‘went to the heart’ of the FBI’s investigation, the government’s about-face, without explanation, raises concerns about the regularity of its decision-making process,” Sullivan observed.Yet as Trump-era books go, Hatchet Man fails to sizzle. It is short on news and does not entertain. Those with first-hand knowledge did not share it with Honig. Rather, his book is a lament and a prayer for an idealized version of Main Justice that seldom ever was.The power to prosecute and defend is a potent weapon and politics weighs in the balance. John F Kennedy tapped Bobby Kennedy, his brother, as attorney general. Richard Nixon placed John Mitchell, his law partner, in the job. Alberto Gonzales, George W Bush’s counsel since his days as Texas governor, held on until he was forced out. His tenure was a hot mess. The usual question for attorneys general is not whether they are “political” but rather “how political” they are.Under Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch declined to recuse herself from the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email use while attempting to steer James Comey from the shadows where he tried to do his work. The FBI director criticized Lynch’s attempt to recast the investigation as a “matter”.Seeing the hand of the Clinton campaign in this kerfuffle over semantics, Comey wrote that the FBI “didn’t do ‘matters’” and “it was misleading to suggest otherwise”.At the other end of the spectrum stands Edward Levi, attorney general under Gerald Ford. Appointed to clear the Augean stables after the Nixon years, Levi was a rarity. A University of Chicago professor, he named an independent counsel to investigate a mere rumor that Ford had received illegal contributions from maritime unions. A six-month investigation found no wrongdoing – and may have torpedoed Ford’s bid for a full term in power.Honig lauds Lynch’s trial experience. Levi’s grandson, Will Levi, was Barr’s chief of staff. It’s a small world, after all.An entire chapter of Hatchet Man, meanwhile, is devoted to Barr’s decision to inject the government into a defamation lawsuit brought against Trump by the writer E Jean Carroll.Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from TrumpworldRead moreIn 2019, Carroll wrote that Trump sexually assaulted her more than two decades before. Trump said she was “totally lying” and that he knew “nothing about her”.After Carroll requested a DNA sample, Barr removed the lawsuit to federal court and claimed Trump’s comments were made within the scope of his official duties. Honig calls the government’s arguments “specious”. A federal trial judge agreed.Not surprisingly, the Trump administration appealed. More surprisingly, Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, has declined to drop that appeal. In the words of one commentator: “There’s nothing new about the justice department protecting the executive branch and the president.”Honig writes that the DoJ “must enact new, on-the-books policies out of the ditch” Barr dug, in an attempt to restore post-Watergate norms. Call that wishful thinking. What ails the department is what ails America: division and political warfare. Another piece of legislation or a well-crafted executive order is not about to change that.
      Hatchet Man is published in the US by Harper
      TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS domestic policyPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      China and Russia spreading anti-US vaccine misinformation, White House says – live

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      Key events

      Show

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Afternoon summary

      4.04pm EDT
      16:04

      New Yorker: Milley stopped Trump attacking Iran

      1.57pm EDT
      13:57

      White House says Russia and China are spreading anti-Western vaccine misinformation on social media

      11.26am EDT
      11:26

      CDC head says country is undergoing ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’

      9.35am EDT
      09:35

      Covid cases rising in every US state, data shows

      Live feed

      Show

      5.40pm EDT
      17:40

      Gabrielle Canon here, signing on from the west coast to take you through the rest of the afternoon.
      First up—
      Today a US federal judge in Texas has ordered the suspension of DACA program, which protects so-called “Dreamers” — immigrants who have been in the US since they were children — from deportation, arguing that it was illegally created by the Obama Administration.
      US District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in his ruling that the order won’t yet impact the more than 616,000 people are already enrolled in the program until other courts weigh in, but the program is otherwise put on pause.

      Zoe Tillman
      (@ZoeTillman)
      Just in: A federal judge in Texas has blocked the DACA program going forward — it won’t affect current recipients for now (judge is putting that issue on hold, pending expected appeals), but it blocks DHS from approving new applications https://t.co/urJh8jnJDd pic.twitter.com/LqvSDWx2ao

      July 16, 2021

      “DHS violated the APA with the creation of DACA and its continued operation,” he wrote. “Nevertheless,” he added, “these rulings do not resolve the issue of the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients and others who have relied upon this program for almost a decade. That reliance has not diminished and may, in fact, have increased over time.”
      The order will be temporarily stayed in its application to current recipients until “further order of this Court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, or the United States Supreme Court” the ruling says.

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Afternoon summary

      Here’s a quick summary of what happened today.

      Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the country is currently in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” as 97% of people who are hospitalized with Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Every state has reported increases, and the federal government has been doubling down on messaging to get vaccinated, even though many Americans remain skeptical.
      White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the state department has found that Russia and China have been spreading misinformation on social media that claims vaccines made in the West are ineffective. The White House has been calling out social media companies to do more to curb misinformation on their sites.
      An excerpt from an upcoming book by journalists Susan Glasser and Peter Baker revealed that Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, stopped Donald Trump from launching an attack on Iran.
      Anonymous sources have said that the ex-daughter-in-law of Allen Weisselberg, who has surrendered to Manhattan prosecutors in their investigation of the Trump Organization for tax fraud, has implicated Trump by telling prosecutors that she witnessed the former president offering to pay for her children’s tuition instead of giving her husband a raise.

      Stay tuned for more live updates.

      4.53pm EDT
      16:53

      Caitlyn Jenner, who is campaigning to replace California governor Gavin Newsom in his recall race, is currently in Australia to be a contestant on a reality show two months before the election takes place on 14 September.
      On Twitter, Jenner said she is “honoring a work commitment that I had made prior to even deciding to run for governor” and said that she has not paused her campaign.

      Caitlyn Jenner
      (@Caitlyn_Jenner)
      I am honoring a work commitment that I had made prior to even deciding to run for governor. There is no pause at all on this race to save CA!

      July 16, 2021

      Separate reports on Friday from Politico said that Jenner appears to be working on a documentary or series of sorts as a film crew has been following her on the campaign trail.
      Jenner is part of a long slate of Republican candidates who are trying to oust Newsom. She held her first press conference last week, months after she first announced her run.

      4.39pm EDT
      16:39

      Vulnerable Senate Democrats have gotten a flood of cash over the last few months as they gear up for the 2022 elections.
      According to CQ Roll Call, four current Senator – Mark Kelly of Arizona, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire – raised a combined $19.2m between April and June of this year and ended the quarter with $31.3m in the bank.
      Warnock raised $7.2m in the second quarter of 2021, which he ended with $10.5m in the bank. Kelly meanwhile raised $6m and had $7.6m in the bank.
      The fundraising numbers suggest the candidates are out-raising Republicans who have started trickling into the Senate races.

      Kyle Griffin
      (@kylegriffin1)
      Punchbowl News: Cash on hand for senators in competitive races, per second-quarter FEC filings:→ Sen. Mark Kelly: $7.5 million→ Sen. Raphael Warnock: $10.5 million→ Sen. Maggie Hassan: $6.5 million→ Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto: $6.5 million

      July 16, 2021

      4.23pm EDT
      16:23

      Over 1m people were arrested at the US-Mexico between October and June, according to US Border Patrol data released Friday. Over 178,000 people were arrested in June, a 20-year record for that month.
      A bulk of the arrests were of people who are trying to recross the border after being turned away. Migrants looking to cross can immediately be turned away when the government uses Title 42, an order from the Trump administration that allows Border Patrol to bar entry to those who pose a public health risk.
      About 455,000 unique individuals were arrested by US Border Patrol this past year, which is lower than the number of unique individuals who crossed in 2019.

      4.04pm EDT
      16:04

      New Yorker: Milley stopped Trump attacking Iran

      Martin Pengelly

      Susan Glasser of the New Yorker and her husband, Peter Baker of the New York Times, have a Trump book coming out next year. Not to be left out this summer, as the bestseller lists are drenched in the things, Glasser has a piece of standardly startling reporting out on the subject today.
      In short, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and star of many a Trump-related books story of late, reportedly did not only stop Trump from shooting protesters and muse to friends about “Reichstag moments” and “the gospel of the Führer”. He also did his best to stop Trump launching an attack on Iran.
      Here’s the key passage:

      In the months after the election, with Trump seemingly willing to do anything to stay in power, the subject of Iran was repeatedly raised in White House meetings with the president, and Milley repeatedly argued against a strike. Trump did not want a war, the chairman believed, but he kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against US interests in the region. Milley, by statute the senior military adviser to the president, was worried that Trump might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election.
      “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley would say.

      Trump did not do it.
      For what it’s worth, Trump returned to the offensive against Milley on Friday, issuing yet another intemperate statement about the contents of books with which, in the most part, he himself co-operated. The gist: “’General’ Milley (who [former defense secretary James] Mattis wanted to send to Europe in order to get rid of him), if he said what was reported, perhaps should be impeached, or court-martialed and tried.”
      Here, meanwhile, is Lloyd Green’s review of perhaps the biggest of the Trump books, I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, which includes a lot of Milley’s musings about the possibility of a coup, which have really angered Trump. The book is out next week but is No1 on Amazon already:

      3.42pm EDT
      15:42

      US representative Joyce Beatty said in an interview that the arrest of her and eight others yesterday during a voting rights protest was ironic given how quick the response to the protest was compared to the Capitol riot 6 January.
      “Here we are with the disparities of treatment with less than a hundred of people [compared to the] thousands and thousands of people who were not peacefully protesting,” she told SiriusXM Urban Vie’s The Joe Madison Show.
      The protest was “in the same spirit” as protests that took place during the Civil Rights Movement that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

      Joyce Beatty
      (@RepBeatty)
      Let the people vote. Fight for justice. pic.twitter.com/JnEUPl9KJW

      July 15, 2021

      “Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis and other marched, sang, protested and what happened? They got America’s attention,” she said. “We are in a critical point right now… voting rights is our power”

      Updated
      at 3.50pm EDT

      3.08pm EDT
      15:08

      Speaking to the press briefly before he left for Camp David for the weekend, Joe Biden doubled down on the White House’s message against vaccine misinformation.

      Kaitlan Collins
      (@kaitlancollins)
      Asked what his message is to platforms like Facebook on coronavirus misinformation, President Biden says, “They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.” pic.twitter.com/Ke27Vi4M18

      July 16, 2021

      At the White House’s daily press briefing yesterday, press secretary Jen Psaki said that Facebook and other social media companies aren’t doing enough to combat misinformation spreading on their platforms.
      “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts who are popular with our audience with accurate information and boos trusted content,” she said.

      2.56pm EDT
      14:56

      Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a new bill into law Thursday barring police from lying to underage kids during interrogations. More

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      in US Politics

      I Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read

      by

      BooksI Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read Gen Mark Milley saw that the US was in a ‘Reichstag moment’ – four days before the Capitol riot. With this and much more startling reporting, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post deliver the goods once againLloyd GreenFri 16 Jul 2021 07.37 EDTLast modified on Fri 16 Jul 2021 08.24 EDTCocooned at his resorts, the Trump Organization indicted, Donald Trump has come to embrace the insurrection.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead more“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he tells Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Five people died after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January, seeking to overturn the election.Last week, Trump declared: “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”So much for blaming Antifa. Think Charlottesville redux, on a larger stage. Or something even more ominous.In their second book on the Trump presidency, Leonnig and Rucker report that on 2 January 2021, two months after election day and as Trump still refused to concede defeat, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told aides: “This is a Reichstag moment.”He was referring to the fire at the German parliament on 27 February 1933, an incident seized as a pretext by Hitler to begin arresting opponents and to consolidate his power.“The gospel of the Führer,” the authors quote Milley as saying.According to the general, the US under Trump was experiencing its own version of the late Weimar Republic, complete with modern-day “Brownshirts”. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Milley was not alone in seeing shadows of the past slither into the daylight.Trump, Leonnig and Rucker quote a senior official as saying, is a “guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless”, then says “‘I will protect you.’“That’s what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933.”This is a blockbuster follow-up to A Very Stable Genius, in which Leonnig and Rucker chronicled the chaos of Trump’s first three years in office. I Alone Can Fix It pulls back the curtain on the handling of Covid-19, the re-election bid and its chaotic and violent aftermath.The pair are Pulitzer winners, for investigative reporting. Their book is essential reading. They have receipts, which they lay out for all to see.Of Covid, they capture Marc Short, Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, telling folks in February 2020: “It’s not that bad.” The families of more than 600,000 dead Americans would probably disagree. (Short later contracted the virus.)Feeling burned by the authors’ first book, this time Trump sat for a two-and-a-half-hour interview. At the end of it, he let it be known – with a “twinkle in his eye” – that “for some sick reason” he “enjoyed it”.Much as he claims to hate the media and the elite, Trump craves their attention. Much as he believes in his own power of persuasion, Leonnig and Rucker were not converted.Trump’s hubris shines through. But for the pandemic, he claims re-election was inevitable. It’s a salesman’s pitch but one sufficiently rooted in reality. He also claims America’s two greatest presidents could not have defeated him. That is just surreal:
      I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
      Before Covid, the economy was humming. Trump had taken down Qassem Suleimani, a top general in Iran’s Quds force, and the public approved.Joe Biden lost nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. His first win was on 29 February, days after the stock market’s Covid-induced crash, assisted by James Clyburn of South Carolina, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and House majority whip.On the relationship between Covid and Trump’s defeat, Leonnig and Rucker describe Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister, sharing his thoughts with Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who worked for him and Trump, in early 2020.Netanyahu said: “The only thing that can beat President Trump is coronavirus.”With analytic capacity Trump could never muster and a sense of history he lacked, Netanyahu added: “If you don’t understand what a pandemic is and the mathematics behind how this will spread if we don’t contain it, it will collapse economies, and that changes the ball game tremendously.”In August, Trump reamed out Fabrizio after he warned the president the electorate was “really fatigued”. Trump bellowed: “They’re tired? They’re fatigued? They’re fucking fatigued? Well, I’m fucking fatigued, too.”The book’s rawest revelations concern 6 January. At best, Trump was blasé about Mike Pence’s plight, presiding over confirmation of Biden’s win, stuck inside the Capitol as halls and offices were plundered. Like Nero watching Rome burn, Trump fiddled in front of his TV.As for the rioters, Trump now claims he and they are one: “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before.”On 6 January, James Lankford of Oklahoma argued against certification, citing constituents’ concerns about voter fraud. He failed to mention it was Trump who spread that very concern.Hours later, however, the senator voted to certify. Months earlier, Tulsa was the venue for Trump’s infamous comeback rally, a flop which cost Brad Parscale his job as campaign manager and Herman Cain his life.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreLiz Cheney also makes a telling appearance in Rucker and Leonnig’s story. In a 7 January call with Gen Milley, the Wyoming congresswoman unloaded on Jim Jordan, a hard-right Ohio representative and Trump favorite, as a “son of a bitch”.Stuck with Jordan during the Capitol siege, Cheney discounted his expressions of concern, saying: “Get away from me. You fucking did this.” Cheney is now a member of the House select committee charged with investigating the riot.Leonnig and Rucker also quote Doris Kearns Goodwin: “There is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the civil war.”Politicians and acolytes make pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mecca in Palm Beach. Each dusk, Leonnig and Rucker write, he receives a standing ovation.Just the way he likes it.
      I Alone Can Fix It is published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Bloomsbury
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackreviewsReuse this content More