President Trump’s recent tweet claiming President Obama tapped his phone has caused many to ask, is the government be spying on me?
Three Thing to Know
While it is absolutely feasible for your calls to be intercepted by the U.S. government, that doesn’t mean they are — at least not on purpose. Still, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry.
Foreign governments, hackers, and crooks might listen to your calls using malware to compromise your phone.
There are steps you can take to foil the bad guys such as encrypted calling apps and good old-fashioned common sense.
Not Without a Warrant (in theory)
The U.S. government has vast signals intelligence capabilities, but by law it cannot intentionally listen in on U.S. persons without a warrant. To eavesdrop on your calls, the government would first need a warrant. To get it, they’ll need to persuade a judge that probable cause exists that you’ve committed a serious crime. Or, if they suspect you are an agent of a foreign power, they can also get what’s called a FISA warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Recently, legislative reforms further restricted federal surveillance powers and the NSA’s bulk metadata collection.
However, the government routinely eavesdrops on foreigners’ phone calls. If your call is to a foreign national, especially one of interest to our intelligence services, there’s a chance the government could be listening. This is probably how they knew about the calls between Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. It may also be the source of reports of calls between Russians and associates of Donald Trump.
However, US intelligence agencies are supposed to do their best to ignore your side of the conversation. The law requires that they follow “minimization” procedures intended to protect the privacy of Americans. Minimization procedures generally require intelligence agencies to redact references to U.S. persons from any reporting.
Somebody Else Might Be Listening
Foreign governments, on the other hand, could care less about your privacy and have no such need for warrants. Their capabilities to intercept calls are probably more limited, at least within the U.S. But, abroad it’s a whole different story. If you’re traveling overseas, it’s not unreasonable to assume your call might be intercepted.
Even if your call isn’t picked-up over the air, hackers, governments and other bad guys could still tap your conversation using malware. Malicious software can allow the bad guys to not only listen to your calls, but essentially look over your shoulder. Some malware will allow a hacker to see and hear everything you do on your phone. They can log everything you type, including your passwords, and even turn your phone into a remote listening post, transmitting audio and video back to a bad hombre on the other end.
How You Can Protect Yourself
To be safe, you can use an app like Signal that encrypts calls and texts. So, long as your phone itself isn’t compromised, anyone who intercepts your call will get only gibberish. If you’re careful, you can make it far less likely your phone is hijacked.
Keep your phone’s software updated. Updates often contain security fixes that patch vulnerabilities that hackers could take advantage of. Be very careful about clicking on odd links or email attachments, even if it looks valid. Even if an email looks valid, appearing as though it is from say your bank or your email provider, asking you to click a link, don’t do it. Those links could install spyware or capture your password if you use the link to log in. Instead, open your browser and access the web site directly. This technique, known as “spearfishing,” was how Russian hackers were able to compromise Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s email.
Even if you have no reason to suspect the government is spying on on you, it’s still a good idea to take precautions. Hackers trying to steal your credit card number or your identity use some of the same techniques. A connected world, as marvelous as it is, means you have to be a little more careful too.
Repealing Obamacare is hard. President Obama’s health care overhaul, more formally known as the Affordable Care Act, is a tangled web of interrelated mandates, regulations and taxes. Tinkering with any one of them can have a domino effect with unpredictable consequences. President Trump and Republicans want to keep parts of it that are popular, like the guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can still get coverage. But, that’s not as simple as it seems.
1) Keeping Everyone Covered
Repealing Obamacare while keeping its guarantee that those with pre-existing conditions will be covered is one big reason repealing Obamacare is difficult. Health insurers are reluctant to cover people with a history of major health problems because the costs of their care are likely to vastly outstrip the premiums they pay in. If there are too many sick people relative to healthy people in an insurance risk pool, there’s not enough money to pay for everyone’s care.
Obamacare sought to solve this by mandating that everyone buy health health insurance and by providing a subsidy for poorer people to help pay for it. It was hoped that this would mean more young, healthy people less likely to get sick paid premiums leaving enough money left over to provide care for all the people with pre-existing conditions. It didn’t quite go as planned.
Premiums have soared, rising 25% on average this year. There are a number of reasons for this, but two big ones are that not enough healthy people bought plans and the ones that did were more expensive to care for than expected. Insurers were forced to hike premiums to fill the gap.
Just 28% of people enrolled in Obamacare exchanges in the cheaper to care for 18-34 age range, far below the estimated 40% level needed.
The GOP Obamacare repeal plan takes a different approach. It would do away with the mandate to buy coverage and replace Obamacare’s subsidy with a tax credit that offsets the cost of buying insurance.
Unlike a tax deduction, which reduces the income on which a person is taxed, a tax credit directly reduces a person’s tax bill directly.
Unlike the Obamacare subsidy, the tax credit proposed by Republicans would vary from $2,000 to $4,000 based on age, rather than income. The richest tax credits would be reserved for people 60+ years of age who face the largest premiums.
The GOP hopes that this tax credit, when combined with reductions in costly regulatory red tape, more flexibility, and other reforms will encourage more people to get coverage and reduce overall health care costs.
2) Medicaid Expansion
Obamacare offered states the option to expand Medicaid, with the federal government picking up much of the tab. If that money goes away, the thirty-one states took the feds up on the offer would either have to deny coverage to people who gained coverage under the expansion or cough up enough money to pay for it themselves. So, lawmakers from expansion states want to see this part of Obamacare stay in place. Lawmakers from states that didn’t expand don’t think they shouldn’t have to foot the bill for the states that did.
The Republicans’ plan would end Medicaid expansion in 2020, after which the program would undergo dramatic changes. Currently, Medicaid is administered by states under rules set by the Federal government, sharing the costs between them. After 2020, states would get a fixed lump of cash from Washington based on how many people they have enrolled. States could then use that money with few strings attached, allowing states to design their own Medicaid plans that best fit their population. The plan will also establish a $100 billion fund to help with the transition.
3) Paying for It
Obamacare imposed a variety of big tax increases on everything from rich people to tanning salons. The Republican bill repeals most of these taxes, but punted on the thorny question of how to replace the lost revenue. For example, the largest of these, a $158 billion tax on wealthy Americans and investors, would stay in place through 2018. Fiscal conservatives are worried that this could result in a massive explosion in the deficit.
With roughly $575 billion in taxes set to get the ax, this is not an insignificant problem that must be worked out eventually.
4) The Politics are Complicated
If Republicans all stick together, there are enough votes to put this bill on President Trump’s desk. But, that’s a big if. The bill obviously faces universal oppositions from Democrats and from both wings of the Republican caucus. Some conservatives are deriding it as “Obamacare Lite,” a reshuffling of the Obamacare deck chairs disguised as repeal. Yet, more moderate members (mostly those from states that did not expand Obamacare) aren’t unified in support either because they may lose Medicaid dollars.
Stitching all these competing interests together will require someone with extraordinary dealmaking skills. America elected just such a person the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. Whether Trump can put pull it off will be the first real test of whether they made the right call.
A trove of stolen CIA documents released by Wikileaks this week included a catalogue of malware developed by other countries, including Russia, that Wikileaks claimed could facilitate “false flag” attacks that appear as though they were carried out by another country.
Predictably, Kremlin-controlled web sites and conspiracy theorists lost no time touting this as “evidence” that the CIA, not Russia, hacked the DNC.
This leads some to speculate that Russia, who has the most to gain from shifting suspicion away from itself, could be behind the Wikileaks dump this week.
False Flags
Perhaps the biggest news to come out the Wikileaks dump of thousands of pages of purported Central Intelligence Agency documents about the agency’s hacking operations isn’t that it has the capabilities to turn phones and TV sets into microphones. Cybersecurity experts have known about that for years.
The big news was a Wikileaks tweet that the CIA can conduct “false flag” attacks using malware embedded into computers. A false flag attack is one in which the instigator diverts suspicion to another country or entity. According to Wikileaks, a collection of malware employed by other countries could facilitate such attacks by leaving forensic fingerprints that point investigators towards, say, Russian intelligence agencies rather than Langley.
@Wikileaks: “CIA steals other groups virus and malware facilitating false flag attacks”
As the Daily Dot noted: “All of this immediately gave rise to a new conspiracy theory: the CIA must have hacked the Democratic National Committee itself and blamed Russia. The website Sputnik International, which is owned and operated by the Russian government, was happy to entertain this theory, as was the ‘citizen journalism’ website Russia Insider, which asserted that any evidence of hacking that points to Russia ‘must now be dismissed as either fake or meaningless.’”
And maybe that was the point of the Wikileaks dump – to sow confusion and point fingers for the DNC hack and other attempts to influence the 2016 elections at the CIA rather than Russia. This is all speculation, but there are multiple signs that suggest Russia could be behind both the DNC hack, and the Wikileaks dump as well.
Russia’s Long History of ‘Active Measures’ Operations
For half a century, Russian intelligence agencies have conducted on-and-off operations aimed at disrupting Western democracies known as “active measures.” In the intelligence community’s report on Russian influence in the 2016 elections, the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper noted: “During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used intelligence officers, agents of influence, forgeries, and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as being hostile to the Kremlin . . .”
Starting under President Putin – who it should never be forgotten is a former KGB officer – the Russians expanded that effort to include cyber warfare in the former of hacking, leaking hacked files and phishing operations against government officials, political figures, journalists and think tank executives.
Clapper stated, “By their nature, Russian influence campaigns are multifaceted and designed to be deniable because they use a mix of agents of influence, cutouts, and false-flag operations.”
The Russians did not just try to influence the 2016 elections (whether they did or not is something that only history can determine), but they also did so during the 2014 Ukrainian crisis. Russian intelligence service likely are involved in this year’s French and German elections as well. Witness the false reports in Russian media about German women being raped by refugees, or the near daily drip of news stories about scandals that affect the French far right and right presidential candidates, neither of whom would not be hospitable to the Kremlin.
Nothing New
Matthew D. Green, a cryptology expert at Johns Hopkins University told the Washington Post, “The idea that the CIA and NSA can hack into devices is kind of old news. Anyone who thought they weren’t was living in a fantasy world.” Green’s right. There have been numerous press reports about the potential for devices hooked up the Internet, including baby monitors, being converted into covert listening posts. It can be assumed that these are all vulnerabilities of which a sophisticated state intelligence service could take advantage.
The NSA demonstrated this possibility in a 2011 cybersecurity briefing to congressional staff meant to convince staff traveling overseas of the need for security. An NSA official, using his laptop, secretly activated an iPhone in the audience to record the presentation and play it back to the astonished of staffers. It was a dramatic way of showing the way the devices can be used to spy on the owner.
Why Some Suspect Russia
Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkley, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the CIA documents “were taken in February or March 2016.” That date is very significant. The reason is that, according to Clapper, “The General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) probably began cyber operations aimed at the US election by March 2016.” This bears repeating: The CIA documents were handed over to Wikileaks at precisely the same time the Russians started their campaign to influence the elections.
Ties between Russia and Wikileaks have long been suspected. Susan Hennessy, a former NSA lawyer now at the Brookings Institution said, “There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of the links between Assange and Russia. It’s certainly not a coincidence that Russian military intelligence selected WikiLeaks as a distribution platform for its Democrats hack.”
Clapper again: “We assess with high confidence that the GRU [Russian military intelligence] used . . . Wikileaks to release” information “obtained in cyber operations [hacks] publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.” The DNI reports that “Moscow most likely chose Wikileaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity . . . . The Kremlin’s principal propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with Wikileaks.”
Those who choose to believe that Wikileaks is not in bed with Russian intelligence agencies, should consider that among the first people to vouch for the Wikileaks was none other than Edward Snowden, who intelligence officials strongly believe is a Russian agent. In a tweet issued within hours of the Wikileaks dump Snowden, who is now living in Moscow, said what the documents were “genuinely a big deal. Looks authentic.”
Wikileaks was heavily involved in Snowden’s case as well. One of the people who helped Snowden escape to Russia was Sarah Harrison, a Wikileaks editor. “When the U.S. charged him under the Espionage Act . . . an extradition order was sent to Hong Kong,” an article in Vogue notes. “But it came too late: Before anybody made a move to capture him, Edward Snowden—led by Sarah Harrison—had quietly boarded a flight to Moscow and basically vanished.”
The ‘Deep State’ Plot
James Lewis, senior vice-president at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and an expert on cyber security, speculated to The Guardian that the motive behind the leak could be to underpin the false flag narrative of the Trump camp. “This might be one explanation for the leaks – it’s data to build a case that the Russian interference and connections are a secret ‘deep state’ plot, as the false flag bits in WikiLeaks ‘shows’” Lewis said.
Why else would Russian intelligence want to dump thousands of pages of CIA documents onto the Web? A clue may be found in a throw-away paragraph of a Washington Post article: “The FBI has spent years investigating Wikileaks, and authorities are eager to figure out whether it has recruited a well-placed source from the U.S. government.” A former intelligence official was quoted as saying, if the Wikileaks documents came from the CIA, “there’s going to another major mole hunt.”
People unfamiliar with CIA history will ask what does the unnamed intel official mean by “another?” James Angleton ran the CIA’s counter espionage program. A CIA publication about Angleton notes that, starting in the 1960s and for roughly the next 10 years, he “embarked on counterproductive and sometimes harmful efforts to find moles [within the CIA] . . .” To put it more bluntly, Angleton tore the agency apart.
Perhaps there were two purposes behind the Wikileaks tweet: First to throw suspicion of the source of the DNC hack off the Russians and onto the CIA; and, second, to have the CIA and other U.S. intel agencies chase their tails for years in a mole hunt while the Russians and their allies do what they want.
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The author is a former U.S. government investigator.
NOTE: An earlier version of this story stated that a FISA warrant was received by the FBI. There is conflicting reporting on this point. The story has been updated to more accurately reflect this uncertainty.
In a series of tweets Saturday morning, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to accuse his predecessor of tapping his phone in the month leading up to the election. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp[ing] my phones during the very sacred election process,” Trump tweeted. “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Five things you need to know
While it is highly unlikely that President Obama personally ordered anyone to tap the phones in Trump tower, the FBI has been actively pursuing several overlapping investigations that relate to connections between Trump confidants and Russia.
Any communications between Trump associates and Russian officials would almost certainly have been intercepted as part of the U.S. intelligence community’s routine monitoring of Russian intelligence officers and government officials. No action would have been required of Obama.
Stories in the British press have reported that the FBI sought, and apparently received, a FISA warrant. Caution is warranted. American news outlets have never been able to corroborate the British reporting and there are other reasons to doubt this as well.
Even if there was a FISA warrant, it would not have targeted Trump directly. Even the British reports do not support the claim that it targeted phones in Trump tower. Rather, the British stories claim it focused on the activities of two Russian banks and the peculiar behavior of a computer server registered to the Trump Organization.
The complexity and arcane processes governing national security investigations provide fertile conditions for conspiracy theories. Presidents do not have the power to unilaterally order wiretaps on U.S. persons. If Obama did specifically order a wiretap targeting Trump, it would be a scandal of epic proportions. However, from what we know, there’s no evidence to suggest he did.
A Suspicious Server and a ‘Silent Coup’
Trump’s tweet-storm coincides with the publication of a Brietbart story reportedly making the rounds in Trump world on Friday. In it, radio talk show host Mark Levin outlined what he said was a silent “silent coup” plotted by President Obama in the closing days of his administration to undermine his successor. Based on the publicly available evidence, Levin’s theory is far-fetched. The truth is probably far less dramatic. And, at the center of the story is (drumroll please) yet another email server.
Julian Sanchez has an excellent post sorting through Levin’s arguments over at Just Security.
The White House says that Trump’s tweet was based on several articles, most of which are also cited by Levin. The most significant (and controversial) of these is a November article by Louise Mensch, of Heat Street, a British news site. According to Mensch’s report, “the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court warrant in October…after evidence was presented of a server” registered to the Trump Organization “and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank.”
The FBI’s interest was piqued late last spring when a group of academic computer scientists reviewing Domain Name Server (DNS) logs, a sort of central address book that helps internet traffic find its way around the web, noticed something strange in the DNS requests coming from a disused server registered to the Trump Organization. It seemed to be communicating almost exclusively with two servers registered to Russian-based Alfa bank. It wasn’t necessarily nefarious, but it was odd. Considering that around that same time, in June of last year, cybersecurity researchers concluded that the Russian government had been behind attacks on the DNC’s email system, it was alarming enough to investigate further.
According to a BBC report, the FBI is said to have sought the warrant “to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.” The order, the BBC story claims, targeted foreign entities rather than President Trump or his associates directly.
“Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day. Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the FISA order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities – in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States…”
The New York Times, which has not reported that a FISA warrant was involved. According to the Times, after examining data from the server the FBI determined that the servers’ odd behavior might be explained by something more innocuous, like a misaddressed email bouncing back and forth between the servers.
Careful Denials
President Obama and former administration officials deny that there was any FISA warrant issued targeting Trump or his staff. Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that, speaking for the intelligence community, there was “no wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.” Clapper confirmed that if the FBI had received such an order, he would have been aware of it.
Former President Barack Obama’s spokesman Kevin Lewis also denied Trump’s accusation.“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Lewis said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Presidents do not have the power to unilaterally order a wiretap on Trump, or any U.S. ‘person.’ Even if there had been a wiretap order on Trump’s phones, it would be requested by the attorney general rather than the president. A wiretap requires first obtaining a warrant from a Federal judge. To do so, the government must demonstrate that there is probable cause that the target of the wiretap has committed a serious crime or, in the case of FISA warrants, is an agent of a foreign power.
Trump’s Phones Weren’t Tapped; but the Russians’ Were
No credible source, including the ones cited by the White House, assert Trump’s phones were tapped. Trump can rest easy. Unless…
Any conversations with Russian officials would be intercepted as part of the routine surveillance that U.S. intelligence agencies conduct on Russian government officials. There would be no need for Obama to tap Trump’s phone to pick-up conversations with Russians, the Russians’ phones are almost certainly being listened to anyway. Clearly conversations between Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak were monitored. However, there are strict FISA “minimization procedures” restricting how such incidental collections of conversations involving U.S. persons could be used. David Kris of Lawfare provides a good explanation of how this applied in the Flynn case:
“It is certainly true that U.S. intelligence services can get orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor foreign officials. The Russian ambassador, simply by virtue of his nationality and official position, is an “agent of a foreign power” under FISA and hence a valid target for wiretapping. It is publicly known and acknowledged that the U.S. government uses FISA to wiretap foreign embassies and consulates…
“…In some cases, when an intelligence agency issues a report based on a wiretap, minimization requires the issuing agency to substitute a generic reference in place of a U.S. person’s name—e.g., ‘Ambassador Kislyak said that he was looking forward to watching the Grammy Awards on television and that he was hoping that [U.S. Person] would win an award.’ [Intelligence reports aren’t always exciting as you think.]
“But a U.S. person’s name can be used when it is necessary to understand the foreign intelligence information in the report, and no serious argument can be made that Flynn’s identity was not necessary to understand the intelligence significance of his call with Ambassador Kislyak.”
Political Jujitsu
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal last week represented only the latest maddening drip in a Chinese water torture inflicted by a string of Russia-related revelations that keep knocking the legs out from under White House denials.
While nothing has emerged so far that provides conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing, memories of Trump associates seem to get unusually hazy when it comes to their dealings with Russia. Judging by how often Trump aides have been forced to clarify their statements, team Trump must feel more misunderstood than a teenage goth listening to Morrissey on repeat.
The White House’s preferred tactic – deny it all as fake news and attack the media – has been in a losing battle with real news of late. Turning the tables on Obama puts Trump back on the familiar conspiratorial ground he happily plowed for many years with his birther claims.
Whether intentional or not, President Trump’s accusation is a brazen feat of political jujitsu. In turning the tables on Obama, he shifts the debate and puts himself back on offense. Defending a claim that, however preposterous, is nearly impossible to prove untrue is much easier than disputing facts that are staring everyone in the face.
Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the ongoing investigation into supposed links between Trump campaign staffers and Russian intelligence officers and officials. The announcement came after the Washington Post reported that Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak last year, seeming to contradict statements he had made in is confirmation hearing. Here’s what you need to know
Q: Why did Sessions say he had no communications with the Russians when it now seems he had?
It appears that Sessions was answering a question with the context of his role with the campaign in mind. He wasn’t asked directly rather he personally met with Russians. Rather, he was asked about the broader question of the campaigns communications with Russia by Sen. Al Franken (R-MN). Here’s precisely what he said:
FRANKEN: “CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that quote, ‘Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.’ These documents also allegedly say quote, ‘There was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump’s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.’
“Now, again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”
SESSIONS:“Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
Sessions’ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told the Washington Post that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in his capacity as a senator, not as a Trump campaign surrogate. “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” Flores said.
The response that has caused all the trouble was information Sessions volunteered. It seems unlikely that Sessions, a lawyer by training, would perjure himself unnecessarily. Further, one of the meetings took place in Sessions’ Senate office where it was unlikely to go unnoticed. This all suggests that Sessions may have simply answered the wrong question. In a news conference Thursday, Sessions said his comments at his confirmation hearing were “honest and correct as I understood it at the time.”
Q: Why did Sessions recuse himself?
“I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.” – Attorney General Jeff Sessions
While Jeff Sessions’ mistake may have been innocent, in light of all of the other recent revelations about Trump campaign contacts with Russia it doesn’t look good. Sessions’ position on Trump’s campaign makes a continued role in the investigation untenable. Calls for him to recuse himself would have continued to mount. If he refused to do so, it might allow a perception that there was a cover-up.
Q: Who will handle the case going forward?
The case will simply be handled by Sessions’ Acting Deputy, Dana Boente. According to the Department of Justice’s statement on the matter, “Acting Deputy Attorney General and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente shall act as and perform the functions of the Attorney General with respect to any matters from which I have recused myself to the extent they exist.”
Mr. Boente is a career civil servant who was appointed by President Barack Obama as the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He became acting attorney general after President Trump fired Sally Q. Yates for her refusal to defend Trump’s immigration executive order.
Q: Does Sessions have backing from senior Republicans?
At this point, probably yes. Assuming that the meetings were truly unrelated to the campaign, the fact that Sessions met with the Russian Ambassador isn’t particularly significant.
Q: What does all this mean to the Trump Administration?
It is another data point, albeit perhaps an innocent one, in what is a growing amount of smoke surrounding alleged connections between Trump associates and Russia’s active measures related to the 2016 election campaign. The steady stream of leaks about Russian connections is draining Trump’s political capital and complicating his ability to move forward his agenda. It may also make it more politically difficult for Republicans facing a re-election challenge in next year’s mid-terms to defend him.
Q: What are the chances of Sessions keeping his job as Attorney General?
Very good. If the only issue is two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kisylak unrelated to Russia’s active measures operation in the 2016 campaign then it is very likely that Mr. Sessions will maintain his post. However, if there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that Sessions was a party to, his position may quickly become untenable.
Increasingly political awards show speeches could benefit from a little understanding. Here’s the speech we wish we’d hear at the Oscars tonight. We’re not holding our breath.
“Like many of you, I am unhappy with last year’s election results and concerned about the direction our president is taking the country. But at the same time, it is time to acknowledge that I – we, those of us in this room – missed something fundamental going on in this country.
“So while I will continue to oppose this president and many of his policies, I’m committing myself to listening – really listening – to those who supported him, certain in the knowledge that we have more in common than not.
“It’s still a fact that most of us in this country want a place where we can chase and achieve our dreams, create a good life and opportunity for our families, and recognize that through diversity comes our great strengths. That was true when boatloads of European foreigners arrived at Ellis Island in the early days of the 20th Century, and it’s true today when planes from London and Istanbul and Kabul arrive at LAX or JFK, carrying people who’ve taken the many long, hard steps it takes to qualify for citizenship here.
“We all pay taxes, we all live in the same place, a place that is truly great. But we can and must do better. That’s the essence of America, and being an American – always striving for improvement.
“So let’s all of us seek out those who think differently from us on some issues, humble in our understanding that neither we, nor they, have all the answers.
“Finally, I’d like to thank my mom, my dad, my producers, my co-stars for helping me achieve this great honor. Because in filmmaking, like in life, we never achieve anything all by ourselves.
Richard Keil is a former White House correspondent for Bloomberg News and national reporter for the Associated Press. Keil is currently Executive Vice President at public relations firm H&K. Follow him on Twitter @RDKeil1
For the classes I teach at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business I make my students write policy memos to a friend or family member as if that person was a Member of Congress. I have done the same here. These memos are similar in style to those I used to write for President George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Here’s a pdf version.
Stanford
25 February 2017
MEMORANDUM FOR A MEMBER OF CONGRESS
FROM: KEITH HENNESSEY
SUBJECT: THE PRESIDENT’S DEBT TWEET
You asked whether you should echo or retweet President Trump’s tweet about declining debt.
The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo.
It appears the president was repeating something Herman Cain said this morning on Fox & Friends Weekend. We know the president watches this show and his tweet appeared shortly after Mr. Cain was on-air.
The numbers are technically correct.
Debt held by the public declined $19.6 B from January 20, 2017 to February 23, 2017, the most recent day for which data is available.
In 2009 the same measure increased $222.6 B (more than the “$200 billion” the president cited) over the same timeframe.
But government cash flows are lumpy, leading to big daily fluctuations in government debt.
Had the president / Mr. Cain ended his timeframe one day earlier this tweet would have been invalid and debt would have increased (by just $1 B) in “the first month.”
This is why analysts look at debt on an annual basis rather than daily/weekly/monthly.
Neither president affected government borrowing in his first month.
Government borrowing in January and February is the byproduct of spending and tax policies set by Congress the year before. President Obama signed the fiscal stimulus law on February 17, 2009, but it took months before that began to change government cash flows and borrowing requirements. President Trump has so far not measurably affected fiscal policy in general or government borrowing in specific.
It’s unfair to assign any responsibility for borrowing in the first month to either president.
The big difference between early 2009 and now is the health of the economy.
GDP was plummeting when President Obama took office. Tax revenues were down, automatic stabilizer payments (e.g., unemployment insurance and safety net spending) were up, and funds were being spent from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In early 2009 government was borrowing a lot because the economy was weak, not because of President Obama’s policies.
In contrast, the U.S. economy is now growing. The smaller borrowing requirement for this month is mostly a result of this economic difference, and may also in part be simply an artifact of choosing such a short timeframe for comparison.
Recommendation
Because of his unique communications advantages, President Trump may be able to get away with making an argument with such a weak foundation. You cannot, and you should not place yourself in the position of having to address the intellectual weaknesses described above.
More concerning, this tweet shows the president continues to rely on TV rather than his advisors for numbers and policy substance. Until his staff figure out a way to ensure he doesn’t make such easily rebutted claims, you should not echo the president’s economic arguments or claims without first verifying both their accuracy and substantive merit. This is particularly true of his early morning and late night tweets, when he’s probably in the residence and away from his staff. This unfortunate situation will persist as long as President Trump continues to take his numbers and policy arguments from TV pundits rather than from Mr. Cohn, Director Mulvaney, and Secretary Mnuchin.
Keith Hennessey teaches economic policy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and served as Director of the National Economic Council for President George W. Bush.
Many Americans who pay any attention to politics have probably wondered, “What the heck is a gaggle?” since White House Spokesman Sean Spicer on Friday deliberately excluded several news organizations from a pen-and-pad briefing that abruptly took the place of the previously scheduled televised daily briefing.
The gaggle kerfuffle proceeded to dominate headlines and air time for much of Friday as the latest example of the increasing contempt with which the Trump administration holds CNN, The New York Times, TheLos Angeles Times, Politico, Buzzfeed, the BBC, The Guardian, some of which he has previously dubbed “fake news” and “enemies of the people.”
At the same time, the White House went out of its way to include conservative outlets Breitbart, One America News, and The Washington Times in the gaggle, which was also attended by a variety of other mainstream publications that haven’t (yet?) attracted the president’s ire for tone and tenor of their coverage. A few news organizations including the Associated Press boycotted the briefing in solidarity with the excluded journalists.
The blowback was swift. New York Times editor Dean Baquet called the hand-picked briefing audience unprecedented. The National Press Club – the only venue willing to host the “Deploraball” on Inauguration weekend — called the action “unconstitutional censorship.” But Spicer defended his decision, saying the White House would continue to “aggressively push back” on “false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts” he alleges the news organizations in question have perpetrated.
Briefings, Gaggles and Pools
There’s a lot to unpack here, but understanding the different types of press availabilities at the White House (and for that matter, most of official Washington) is a critical first step.
Most people have watched the press secretary’s daily briefing. That is typically held in the afternoon around 2 p.m. and has been televised live on a more or less routine basis since the Clinton administration, usually on cable news/CSPAN. That press briefing has become highly ritualized with reporters peacocking and press secretaries reciting talking points. Until this year, they rarely made news of their own accord. More to the point, nearly anyone claiming to be a journalist can attend the briefing by getting a daily pass approved by the Secret Service; the briefing famously attracts interesting characters of all ideological persuasions.
The gaggle is different. Typically, it is off-camera and also called a “pen-and-pad” although reporters usually record it for note-taking purposes. A gaggle can occur anywhere – the press secretary almost always holds one with pool reporters on Air Force One before arriving at a destination, for example.
During the Clinton and Bush administrations, there were also daily gaggles held in the morning before the televised briefing (I am told the Obama administration did away with this practice). These sessions typically are held inside the press secretary’s office, which is located behind the briefing room, down the hall from the Oval Office. They served as an opportunity for reporters to get a first glimpse of the day from the press secretary. But they also gave the press secretary an early indicator of what stories reporters are chasing. Good press secretaries did two things with this information – they gave information and answers to the reporters for their early stories and began refining their talking points for the televised briefing later.
Among other types of groupings, there are two types of “pools.” The first is formed when space is limited, with pool reporters obliged to share all information from whatever event they cover with the entire press corps. The second is the traveling pool, which limited to the number of seats on Air Force One and includes the wire services, photographers and rotating television, magazine, radioo and newspaper representatives. Being a permanent member of this pool requires extensive financial resources as the government bills the news organizations proportionately for air travel and other costs.
Finally, there are “backgrounders” and other less formal press availabilities with the president and senior aides. Participating in these events is by invitation and inherently selective – oftentimes journalists don’t find out they were excluded until after the fact. No fuss is made because there is no expectation, implicitly or explicitly, of collective access, like there is for press briefing or daily gaggle.
What to Make of it All
Friday’s controversy erupted in part because of confusion and differing interpretations over these structures. Spicer’s availability originally was scheduled as a briefing. Then it was abruptly called a gaggle. Spicer later defended it as an “expanded pool.” Former White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer, alluding the “backgrounder” category of grouping, accused the press of “hyperventilating” because previous presidents, including Obama, have often been selective about which members of the press to engage.
The difference here is the retaliatory nature of the exclusion. It’s true that while the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, it does not guarantee access to the president or his spokesman, however punitively excluding journalists working in a public building funded by taxpayers is a slippery slope. Spicer himself in December acknowledged that barring access is “something a dictator does.”
There is also the fact that this is just the latest in a sustained attack by Trump that appears aimed at delegitimizing established news organizations that are most aggressively investigating his policies and activities while simultaneously attempting to legitimize outlets viewed as sycophantic and don’t subscribe to professional journalism standards codified by the Society for Professional Journalists and the National Press Club.
Ultimately, the gaggle kerfuffle is a distraction and red herring. For Trump, it rallies his base (which isn’t the same thing as the conservative base — many staunch conservatives are deeply concerned about the treatment of the press as well). More importantly, it has news organizations navel gazing about how they’re being treated. The number of TV hours, column inches and journalism resources to this incident comes at the expense of deeper coverage/investigation of other important developments.
The biggest is the revelation that White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus asked the FBI to “push back” against reports that Trump aides had extensive contacts with Russian intelligence officials (news of which catalyzed the exclusion from the gaggle in the first place.). But it can be argued other developments merited more coverage, including sussing out the administration’s response to North Korea’s willingness to use chemical weapons like VX in a crowded airport for an assassination and the ongoing developments with Trump’s immigration policies.
Instead, these stories are being pushed off the proverbial front page by journalists forced to cover themselves, something that in and of itself violates a long-standing tenet of the trade.
Now that Trump has sought to exclude some press from his press secretary’s briefings, his next step will be to exclude himself: He announced late Saturday that he won’t attend the White House Correspondents Dinner
Ryan Donmoyer was a White House reporter from 2001-2005 for Bloomberg News.
Among the most striking developments of 2016 was the extent to which politics came to be defined less by which policies we advocate, but which facts we believe. Political discourse has increasingly run aground over disagreements about what is and is not true before even reaching the substance of issues. The competition of ideas that makes democracy work is becoming an endangered species.
Donald Trump’s supporters see Russian election hacking as a hoax promoted by the left and their allies in the media to discredit his victory. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s partisans are convinced that Russia’s hacking not only happened, it delivered him the election. Both are wrong. Russian hacking probably did happen, but it’s not the reason Trump won. Because neither side can reach agreement on what reality actually is, they cannot reach meaningful consensus on what to do about it either.
The rise of fake news and Donald Trump’s sometimes counterfactual rants, both on and off Twitter, have received a lot of ink. Yet, they are mostly symptoms of larger trends that are slowly killing truth. The economics of digital media is driving a proliferation of increasingly sophisticated clickbait designed to press our political buttons. Social media algorithms and news sources that cater precisely to our political preferences are creating ideological bubbles that expose us only to content that reinforces our pre-existing beliefs regardless of veracity. Media bias, real and perceived, is eroding trust in mainstream news sources. But, the lion’s share of the blame can be placed on our own intellectual laziness and unwillingness to consider information that challenges our assumptions.
There is a strong case that, in America and elsewhere, there is a shift towards a politics in which feelings trump factsmore freely and with less resistance than used to be the case. Helped by new technology, a deluge of facts and a public much less given to trust than once it was, some politicians are getting away with a new depth and pervasiveness of falsehood. If this continues, the power of truth as a tool for solving society’s problems could be lastingly reduced. — The Economist
A free and independent press is democracy’s natural defense mechanism against the proliferation of nonsense. But, declining trust in mainstream news has rendered it impotent as an impartial arbiter of truth. Less than a third of Americans (32%) now trust mainstream media, the lowest level recorded since Gallup began tracking it in 1972.
Some of this erosion of trust in media is self-inflicted. Facing stiff competition from a new breed of edgier news sources like Breitbart, BuzzFeed and Vox, old-line news outlets increasingly prioritize conflict, yawn at consensus, and present complex issues in ways more likely to provoke.
While mainstream news has long given conservatives justifiable reason to complain of biased news coverage, 2016 took it to a whole new level. Politicians, including Donald Trump, must be held accountable. But, they must be held to an equal standard. Yet, to paraphrase Orwell, when it comes to the media’s approach to Donald Trump some are more equal than others.
An alien descending to earth would be hard pressed not to conclude that mainstream news outlets were pulling for Hillary to win. The near universal disdain for Trump on editorial pages and front pages alike is hard to miss. Revelations of cozy relationships between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and reporters further confirmed the suspicions of many conservatives (and Bernie Sanders supporters too) that the media was in the tank for Hillary. The media’s unanimous dismissal of Trump having any chance at victory appears in hindsight suspiciously like wishful thinking.
Reflecting the view of many in the news business, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg wrote back in August that when journalists believe that Trump is a danger to the Republic “you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century.” Carolyn Ryan, The New York Times’s senior editor for politics, told Rutenberg that Trump’s candidacy is “extraordinary and precedent-shattering…to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.” Rutenberg concludes that “[i]t may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness.”
When the media can no longer be depended upon as an objective arbiter of truth, differing versions of reality widen partisan gaps and destroy common ground upon which political leaders can find compromise.
While there is much about Donald Trump that is worthy of scrutiny, in their zeal to expose Trump’s flaws journalists have too often seemed to drop the veneer of journalistic objectivity altogether. The inconsistent standard the media apply to Donald Trump not only infuriates his supporters, it justifies them in the belief that nothing in the press can be trusted. And that is a problem.
A free press that can be trusted to distinguish fact from fiction is crucial to the proper functioning of democracy. When one thing is unfair or untrue, it is reasonable for people to assume that everything else might be too. Trust in media breaks down, fake news can flourish and politicians can lie without consequence. When the media can no longer be depended upon as an objective arbiter of truth, differing versions of reality widen partisan gaps and destroy common ground upon which political leaders can find compromise. In short, democracy breaks.
Fake-ish News
Some fringier media outlets are taking things a step further. A story is making the rounds of the internet, complete with foreboding images evocative of George Orwell’s 1984, about a provision “buried deep within” the annual military funding bill recently signed by President Obama that purportedly creates a “de facto Ministry of Truth.”
SOURCE: ZeroHedge.com
ZeroHedge.com declares that it “marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information.” But, once the layers of hyperbole are peeled back, this is wildly misleading.
The truth is far more pedestrian. The provision established a “Global Engagement Center” at the State Department to coordinate various programs aimed at countering foreign propaganda such as the State Department’s public diplomacy functions and U.S. information services like Voice of America. The Center is directed at addressing the growing use of disinformation by foreign adversaries, not manufacturing propaganda aimed at the American people.
Nothing in the provision that was just signed into law would “[curtail] press freedom and…stultify avenues of accurate information.” Quite the opposite. The objective is to expand access to accurate, independent sources of information in response to foreign efforts to spread disinformation.
A more sober, factual version of the story is, however, unlikely to get much traction online. Dressed up in Orwellian clothes it is catnip for those pre-disposed to believe Barack Obama an aspiring tyrant. The version of the story posted on ZeroHedge.com has already racked up 59,000 shares and counting. By polluting the internet with grossly distorted interpretations of facts, it is ironically posts exactly like this that actually “stultify avenues of accurate information” far more than any Global Engagement Center ever could.
The overwrought hysteria about Obama’s “Ministry of Truth” is emblematic of a trend of disingenuously repackaging real news to enhance its viral qualities and, it is hoped, draw traffic that can be sold to advertisers.
The objective is not to inform, but to attract eyeballs and hold them long enough to convert them into revenue.
It’s not “fake news” per se, but a close cousin that contains enough truth to appear credible, while clothed in enough hyperbole to attract the clicks, likes and shares to make it go viral. Call it “fake-ish news.” The objective is not to inform, but attract eyeballs and hold them long enough to convert them into ad revenue.
Content providers may argue that this is just good business. But, it is also having a real impact on democracy. Whether we need another layer of bureaucratic coordination for U.S. public diplomacy programs and how appropriate government programs aimed at influencing oversees audiences are to begin with is a matter of legitimate debate. But, by blurring the lines between the real issue and the canard of a dystopian Ministry of Truth, “fake-ish news” ensures ensures that this a debate we will not have.
It is not just fringe blogs that play the “fake-ish” news game. Revenue starved traditional media outlets also sometimes manipulate news in subtle ways that, while not technically inaccurate, evoke provocative if erroneous assumptions.
Recently, CNN published a story online with the headline “Saddam Hussein’s daughter: Trump has ‘political sensibility’”
The interview with Hussein’s eldest daughter Raghad, was mostly a reflection on her father’s rule and the Iraq war. There is little to no news value in what the daughter of a long-dead dictator thinks of Donald Trump. It is the headline mostly because it is coming from someone called Hussein, a name long tagged with pariah status. Right-leaning internet trolls use Barack “Hussein” Obama’s full name for the same reason. By referencing Hussein’s views on Trump, it is sure to get some shares among progressives. It is an editorial decision that while defensible, appears to be less about news and more about traffic.
As one Tweet cracked: “I know when I need to know more about Trump Saddam’s daughter is the first person that comes to mind. I wonder what Hitlers kin think?”
I know when I need to know more about Trump Saddam's daughter is the first person that comes to mind. I wonder what Hitlers kin think?
These sorts of tactics may be a sign to things to come. As the financially troubled news industry seeks to shore up wobbly balance sheets, increasing their share of the digital advertising pie is critical. News outlets are increasingly dependent on digital ad revenue, by far the fastest growing advertising segment. A quarter of newspaper revenues came from digital last year. That is a huge jump from the 5% of newspaper ad revenue that came from digital a decade ago.
Attracting larger audiences increasingly means luring people away from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter where they spend the vast majority of their time online. According to a study published earlier this year, 6 in 10 Americans get news from social media and that number is certain to grow. News outlets have strong incentives to present content that entices people to click by playing up angles likely to invoke strong partisan reactions.
It’s not just Macedonian teenagers and Russian hackers that are corroding the inner-workings of Democracy. The very same media outlets that have been contemptuous about fake news are also sometimes guilty of a tamer version of the same thing.
The Solution is Up to Us
None of this is good for democracy. As content providers get better at enticing us to click on their websites, news media blurs the lines of journalistic objectivity, and social media locks us into partisan bubbles, we get worse at doing our jobs as citizens and voters.
There is no magic fix. A lot of the solution is up to us. Truth might not be completely dead. It is still possible to gain some reasonable measure of truth, it just takes more work.
Accept that media bias exists, but don’t assume that everything you see is the product of it. Reading more than one source on the same topic helps add context and separate fact from biased conjecture.
Be wary of outlandish conspiratorial claims, especially those that appear on obscure websites that deluge you with ads. Do some research and apply some common sense before accepting these claims as fact and sharing them on social media.
Make a concerted effort to seek out smart opinions contrary to your own and consider them with an open mind. At worst, you’ll have greater reason for confidence that your point of view is correct.
The availability of vast quantity of information in the 21st century equips us with better tools than anyone in history to determine what is true, but only if we choose to use them.
The abundance of information also has a darker side that can make it harder to distinguish fact from fiction. More information means more bogus, misleading and downright deceptive information too. If we seek only justification for our beliefs, we will surely find it, even if what we believe is wrong.
Dmitry Kiselyov, the Kremlin’s propagandist-in-chief, declared in a recent interview with The Economist that this means “[t]he age of neutral journalism has passed. It is impossible because what you select from the huge sea of information is already subjective.” Let’s all make it a point to prove him wrong.
Judging from the sorry state of political discourse in this country, the darker side is winning. That is more of a threat to democracy than a thousand Russian hackers. Unless we put in the effort to see the world objectively and understand contrasting points of views, it is impossible to make the rational political decisions required of citizens in a democracy.
It is uncomfortable to confront facts that challenge our deeply held views. But, our republican system of government only works when we have the courage to do so.
Look up this evening towards the constellation Aquarius and you may be looking at another Earth — seven of them in fact. NASA announced this week that the Spitzer space telescope has found seven earth-sized planets orbiting a small, dim star closely enough to allow for liquid water. Three of the planets are within the so-called “habitable zone,” the area around a star most likely to support life.
All seven planets discovered in orbit around the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 could easily fit inside the orbit of Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system. CREDIT: NASA/JPL
The TRAPPIST-1 system, named for the the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) that first identified three of the planets last spring, offers the greatest opportunity yet to determine if life exists beyond Earth.
“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”
The TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it. This artist’s concept appeared on the cover of the journal Nature on Feb. 23, 2017. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
TRAPPIST-1, at 40 light years away, relatively close to us. It’s star is substantially cooler than the earth, allowing planets very close to it to still be cool enough to allow liquid water. The next step will be further analysis of the chemical components of their atmosphere to determine whether the basic building blocks of life, principally water, exist on the planets.
NASA will be following up with further study with the Spitzer, Hubble, and Kepler space telescopes in advance of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, which will be able to observe the TRAPPIST-1 system with far greater sensitivity. Webb, according to NASA, “will be able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone, and other components of a planet’s atmosphere. Webb also will analyze planets’ temperatures and surface pressures–key factors in assessing their habitability.”
The newly discovered planets, known as exoplanets, are closely grouped. Close enough together in fact that standing on the surface of one of the planets, the other nearby planets would be easily visible, appearing larger than the moon in the sky.
This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.
“This is the most exciting result I have seen in the 14 years of Spitzer operations,” said Sean Carey, manager of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California. “Spitzer will follow up in the fall to further refine our understanding of these planets so that the James Webb Space Telescope can follow up. More observations of the system are sure to reveal more secrets.”
The discovery promises the possibility that the question of whether the miracle of life is unique to Earth could be answered within our lifetimes.
When President Donald Trump took to Twitter to declare the media the “enemy of the American people” on Friday, the whole of elite opinion gasped in horror. Coming on the heels of an angry press conference less notable for news than the President’s dressing down of those that cover it, the mainstream media was aghast — and not without reason.
“Even by the standards of a president who routinely castigates journalists — and who on Thursday devoted much of a 77-minute news conference to criticizing his press coverage — Mr. Trump’s tweet was a striking escalation in his attacks,” wrote the New York Times’ Michael Grynbaum.
Trump’s supporters are loving every minute.
To his supporters though, President Trump’s war on the press is a glorious and long overdue angry fist to the nose of the Washington media elite. All the hyperventilating over over the immigration executive order, Michael Flynn’s resignation and lingering questions about connections to Russia are, in their view, contrived by liberals embedded within the bureaucracy desperate trying to cling to power.
President Trump’s supporters see all the recent media outrage as further evidence that he is accomplishing his mission. To them, he is doing exactly what he promised, ripping the status quo up by the roots and unshackling the public discourse from the stranglehold of Washington elites. That almost no one in the mainstream media sees it this way confirms that they just don’t get it. In Trump’s America, if the Washington establishment is rattled things are going exactly as planned.
After a week of bad news, Trump has changed the subject entirely. Battling with the media returns to familiar ground that energizes his base and gets the White House back on the offensive.
A Familiar Complaint
Donald Trump is hardly the first President to be infuriated by the media. No one in public life for any length of time feels they get a fair shake from the press. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was covered as gingerly by the mainstream media as any President. Yet, even he complained bitterly about leaks and unfavorable media coverage.
President Obama griped about the “false equivalence” of reporting that placed the point of view of his opponents on equal footing with his own. The conceit underlying it, of course, is that Obama’s perspective represented the exclusive truth and his opponent’s nonsense. Take away the rhetorical bombast, and Trump is making essentially the same point.
While President Obama was nuanced in his criticism, he was singularly aggressive in his attempts to control the message. The Obama Administration prosecuted twice as many leakers under the Espionage Act than all of its predecessors combined. Yet, with no hint of irony, the Obama White House also elevated sanctioned leaks intended to curry favor with journalists and shape the news cycle to an art form.
“Whenever I’m asked what is the most manipulative and secretive administration I’ve covered, I always say it’s [Obama’s],” Bob Schieffer, CBS News anchor and chief Washington correspondent, told Len Downie, in a Washington Postcolumn. “Every administration learns from the previous administration. They become more secretive and put tighter clamps on information. This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”
Trump’s War on the Press
Like everything he does, Donald Trump’s war on the media is bigger, louder and more spectacular. In doing so, he is pushing dangerously close to the line between legitimate complaint and stifling dissent.
Unlike Obama, Trump has hardly gone out of his way to endear himself to mainstream reporters. At campaign events journalists corralled in the press pen often found themselves captive props for jeering diatribes against the media. At Thursday’s press conference, Trump delighted in pointing out the declining trust in the media. “The press — the public doesn’t believe you people anymore,” Trump told reporters adding almost as a point of pride, “Now maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know.”
According to Gallup, he has a point. Trust in mass media is now at an all-time low of 32%. This fall in trust has been especially pronounced among Republicans (14%) and independents (30%), but among Democrats too, barely half of whom (51%) trust the press.
In a separate poll, substantially more Americans say they think that the press is too tough on Trump (36%) than thought the same about Obama (11%). However, this polling also indicates danger for Trump. A majority (59%) think the press is either getting it about right on Trump (31%) or are not tough enough (28%) on him.
Nearly every major news outlet has found itself on the receiving end of Trump’s weaponized bully pulpit. With trust in the press already at an all time low, Trump is likely to find a receptive audience.
Aspiring Autocrat?
In the precision-guided fury pouring from the President’s lips and his Twitter account, Trump’s detractors see ominous signs of autocratic tendencies. Sunday on Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain, among Trump’s most strident critics within the GOP, defended the press:
“If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press,” McCain said. “And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”
While McCain didn’t go so far as to accuse Trump of being an aspiring autocrat. Others have noted parallels with Vladimir Putin’s rise in Russia. Susan Glasser, a former Moscow correspondent, observed in a New York Times op-ed that you need not believe the conspiracies about Trump and Russia to be concerned about the path he is taking:
“Both Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and actions as president bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Mr. Putin during his first years consolidating power…the similarities are striking enough that they should not be easily dismissed…
“The media-bashing and outrageous statements. The attacks on rival power centers, whether stubborn federal judges or corporations refusing to get in line. The warnings, some of them downright panic-inducing, that the country is not safe — and we must go to war with Islamic extremists because they are threatening our way of life. These are the techniques that Mr. Putin used to great effect in his first years in power, and they are very much the same tactics and clash-of-civilizations ideology being deployed by Mr. Trump today.”
While this is worrying, suggesting Donald Trump is a malevolent autocrat in the making might be a little premature. It’s a far leap from Trump admiring Putin to emulating him. Even if you believe the worst about Donald Trump, there is little risk of a Putinesque autocracy taking root here. Unlike Russia, the U.S. has sturdy institutions and constitutional checks on power that protect against erosions of liberty.
Still concern about Trump’s threat to freedom of the press are not entirely without merit. Distrust in the mainstream press and the rise of social media as an alternate form of communication has created an environment in which reality can be distorted in more subtle ways to undermine dissent.
Trump’s fondness for counterfactual hyperbole creates confusion about whether anything can be reliably understood as objective truth, blunting the effectiveness of contrary facts in holding him accountable. Whether deliberate or not, it is a tactic literally ripped right from the Russian information warfare playbook.
“Multiple untruths, not necessarily consistent, are in part designed to undermine trust in the existence of objective truth, whether from media or from official sources.” writes Keir Giles, a scholar at London-based Chatham House in a recent NATO lithograph, The Handbook of Russian Information Warfare. “This contributes to eroding the comparative advantages of liberal democratic societies when seeking to counter disinformation, by neutralizing the advantages associated with credibility.”
When the media cannot be trusted and facts are unreliable, criticism loses its effective power giving politicians far more scope to operate without accountability. “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins,” Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1737 essay. “Republics…derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.”
Worries about Trump’s threat to freedom of the press are not entirely without merit. Still, there are less far-fetched explanations for Trump’s war on the media than a plot to subvert democracy. Trump’s jousting with journalists may be nothing more than typical frustration with unfavorable press coverage, in typical Trumpean style, turned up to eleven. Either way, a Presidential war on the press should viewed with skepticism.
“I think we’ve learned through history to beware of presidents playing press critic,” Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism told the New York Times in an article about Obama’s complaints about the press. “They’re not press critics — they’re people trying to advance a political agenda.”
Listening to the partisan debate over President Donald Trump’s White House and Russia, one of two things must be be true. Either, as Trump supporters contend, the media and U.S. intelligence community are engaged in a politically motivated effort to undermine the legitimately elected President of the United States; or, if the more hysterical among Democrats are to be believed, Moscow has placed their man in the Oval Office — or at the very least managed to infiltrate the highest levels of American government. Both possibilities are deeply disturbing. The reality is likely somewhere in between.
Take a Deep Breath…
Washington has been a partisan tinderbox for a while now. Any minor dust up gets affixed with the suffix “-gate” and immediately becomes a media obsession. (Monday’s resignation of Michael Flynn is “Flynngate” in case you’re keeping score.) Everyone needs to calm down and check their political reflexes.
The swirl of controversy around connections between Trump’s team and Russia reached gale force Monday with the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It hit full hurricane strength Tuesday with a New York Times bombshell headline sure to send everyone to their partisan corners: “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”
The responses have been predictable. For Trump supporters, more fake news from a leftist media and their subversive “deep state” intelligence community sources, for Democrats, a smoking gun.
Upon careful reading, the Times story is less dramatic than it first appears. Officials say they have found no evidence of collusion with the Trump team related to Russian election interference; investigators have yet to substantiate any of the more explosive allegations in the famous opposition research dossier; and, members of Trump’s team had private business interests entirely separate from the campaign that might explain at least some of the contacts.
So Far, No Evidence of Collusion
If the Times‘ report of repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials is accurate, then the next question is what those conversations were about. Based on what we know so far jumping to the conclusion that these contacts indicate that Trump’s associates were in on Russia’s effort to influence the election is premature:
“The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.”
The Trump Dossier Remains Unverified
The F.B.I.’s investigation has, in part, focused on verifying the opposition research dossier produced by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. According to the Times, those efforts have so far not born fruit:
“The F.B.I. has spent several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to confirm any of its most explosive claims.”
“It’s not like these people wear badges.”
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, is the only individual mentioned by name in the Times story. It is well-known that Manafort served as a political advisor to the pro-Russian former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. So, it’s not particularly surprising that he might have contacts with people in Moscow’s orbit. Manafort calls the implication of collusion with the Russian government “absurd” and is adamant that he has never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers. “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer,’” Manafort told the Times.
Anyone doing business in Russia, as several of Trump’s associates have, is likely to unknowingly encounter Russian intelligence operatives in the normal course of commerce. Acknowledging this, the Times adds that, “[l]aw enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business.”
Trump Strikes Back
President Trump has struck back in recent days, casting all this as a politically motivated smear campaign. In a series of tweets and public comments lashing out at the media and the leakers themselves. In a press conference Thursday, a frustrated President Trump denounced the stories. “The press is honestly out of control,” he said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control.”
On Twitter, Trump contended that it is all as an extension of the political rancor of the campaign.
This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign.
President Trump is correct that leaking signals intelligence intercepts is illegal. Whatever you think of Trump, the permissiveness with which this kind of highly sensitive information is leaking should be a concern. The Washington Poststory that ultimately led National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to tender his resignation was based on the anonymous accounts of “[n]ine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time…”
That so many officials were willing to do so is worrying. Trump has pledged an investigation to get to the bottom of it. President Obama’s extensive mole hunts and aggressive leak prosecutions have already set a standard for this. Better it be handled independently at the Justice Department than directed by the White House.
There is doubtless a political component. At least some of the “former officials” mentioned by the Washington Post are likely to be former Obama administration staffers with a political ax to grind. Still, it is wrong to chalk it all up to just petty revenge. There are reasons other than politics that the intelligence establishment might harbor some ill-feelings about Trump.
There is a pervasive unease about Trump among career intelligence officers stemming from a broader clash of worldview between Trump and the foreign policy and intelligence community on consensus issues like Russia and NATO. Trump has also said many less than flattering things about America’s spy agencies. All this has “generated unprecedented enmity in our Intelligence Community,” according to John Schindler, a former NSA spy and professor at the Naval War College.
There’s also the possibility, which must be at least considered, that at least some of the leaks are rooted in real concerns about connections between Trump’s inner circle and the Kremlin.
So far, none of the leaks directly implicate Trump, a substantial oversight if the aim is to just make stuff up to damage the President. Trump is hardly the first President to face the ire of the intelligence community. Spies also got all leaky over pressure from the Obama White House to sugar-coat intelligence reports about ISIS. Then there is Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Leaks are bipartisan.
The leaks of some in the intelligence community do not justify broad condemnation of intelligence agencies. Most intelligence officers are deeply patriotic men and women who put their lives on the line overseas doing incredibly dangerous things to get the President and policy-makers the information they need to make critical national security decisions. This, at least, is worthy of respect.
This is a time to ask questions, not answer them.
It is valid to believe that career intelligence professionals should be, well, more professional about these things while simultaneously being concern that the new President and those around him appear overly cozy with Moscow. It is appropriate that Congress investigate both. If President Trump is correct that it is all “fake news,” the White House should welcome the opportunity.
Until this question is settled, President Trump will find it difficult to implement his agenda. If the intelligence community is actively working against the President by fabricating connections to Russia, it is unlikely to stop on its own. With each new leek, the President bleeds political capital he will need to accomplish the big things he promises.
If there is truth to the allegations, a secret this explosive is bound to find its way out of the shadows one way or another. But, in the meantime, caution is warranted. The whole country descending into a partisan food fight of conspiratorial speculation does not serve our national interests. As Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and frequent Trump critic wrote recently, that’s exactly what Russia wants:
Those who gain the most from this are people and countries that seek to undermine our system, erode belief in our institutions, seed questions about the quality of our democracy and distract from that which is real.
It is possible that the Trump-Russia connection is a lot of smoke and mirrors. But, there may be some fire too. Either way, this is a time to ask questions, not answer them.
Michael Flynn at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Phoenix, Arizona. Credit: Gage Skidmore
The resignation of President Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is the latest plot twist in a young administration not short on drama. Flynn’s departure follows weeks of intrigue surrounding his frequent contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and ongoing questions about Russia’s role in hacking emails of the Democrat National Committee during last year’s election.
Will Flynn’s departure be a tourniquet on the Russia issue or a new injury?
Michael Flynn, a former Army General who led the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama, has a reputation as a brilliant intelligence analyst but a bit of a bull in the china shop. It was the latter quality that got him sacked by Obama, but his hard-charging style and refusal to mince words about the threat of radical islamic terrorism is also what endured him to Donald Trump. Like his boss, Flynn doesn’t fit the mold of his predecessors. It was unusual for an incoming National Security Advisor to be coordinating so closely with a foreign diplomat during the transition, but not particularly surprising in an administration about which there is little that is usual. And, before we all get carried away, it’s worth noting that it wasn’t illegal either, as Dani Pletka’s excellent column points out.
Rather, it was misleading his White House colleagues, specifically Vice President Mike Pence, that got Flynn in trouble. In Flynn’s words, “Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador.”
Flynn’s resignation raises new questions even as it answers old ones.
It also renews speculation about broader issues regarding Russia’s involvement in the 2016 campaign and contacts between campaign officials and the Russian government. At the least it is yet another distraction for an administration still finding its footing.
The Washington Postreported that then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House Counsel Donald McGahn that Flynn had misrepresented his conversations with Russia’s ambassador, raising concern that he was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. National Security Advisor is among the most sensitive posts in the government, making the message Yates delivered especially alarming.
It is not known whether McGahn shared the information about Michael Flynn with President Trump. If Trump was aware of Yates’ message, it is legitimate to ask why someone potentially compromised by any foreign government, much less Russia, was allowed to continue in this position for so long. If Flynn’s actions were only addressed because news reports made him a liability, there is further reason to be concerned. If the Washington Post had more incompetent reporters (and Trump a less leaky administration), how long would Flynn have been allowed to stay?
Coming on the heels of revelations about Russian hacking of the DNC and unverified reports of inappropriate contacts between Russian officials and members of Trump’s team, there’s a lot of smoke. It is easy to start confusing speculation with evidence of fire.
Manafort, Page, and Now Flynn…
Michael Flynn is the third member of Trump’s orbit to resign amid rumors related to Russia.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager was dismissed this summer amidst a swirl of rumors about his financial dealings with the former pro-Russian President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
Carter Page, a campaign foreign policy advisor to Trump, stepped down in September in the wake of reports that U.S. intelligence agencies were looking into whether Page was secretly coordinating with Russian officials.
And now Michael Flynn…
All three are implicated in the opposition research dossier compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, much of which remains unverified.
While recent reports have verified that some of the conversations between Russian officials described in Steele’s dossier did take place, it’s important to note that the accusations about Manafort and Page are still largely unsubstantiated.
Take a Deep Breath…
Even if the allegations are all true, and that’s still a big if, it is not at all clear that that Flynn, Manafort and Page were acting at the direction, or even knowledge of President Trump. It is entirely conceivable that Manefort and Page were peddling their ties to Trump to their own financial advantage and that’s where it ends.
It’s easy to jump to conclusions. That is unwise until until we know more. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with asking questions. The FBI is investigating and will continue to do so. It is appropriate that Congress look into this as well. Just because the story so far reads like a spy thriller, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will end like one.
Earlier this week, as the outrage over “silencing” Sen. Elizabeth Warren was hitting fever pitch, Senator Marco Rubio took to the Senate floor to give an impassioned defense of respectful political discourse.
Rubio’s speech largely went unnoticed. That’s too bad. What he had to say was important, and well worth taking a few minutes of your time to hear. Here are a few of the best quotes.
Seven best quotes from Senator Rubio’s speech
“We are becoming a society incapable of having debate anymore.”
“I don’t know of a single Nation in the history of the world that has been able to solve its problems when half the people in the country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that country.”
“We are reaching a point in this republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in a corner where everyone hates everybody.”
“In this country, if you watch the big policy debates that are going on in America, no one ever stops to say: I think you are wrong. I understand your point of view. I get it. You have some valid points, but let me tell you why I think my view is better.”
“As soon as you offer an idea, the other side jumps and says that the reason you say that is because you don’t care about poor people, because you only care about rich people, because you are this or you are that or you are the other.”
“I think what is at stake here tonight…is not simply some rule but the ability of the most important Nation on Earth to debate in a productive and respectful way the pressing issues before us.”
“I am so grateful that God has allowed me to be born, to live, and to raise my family in a nation where people with such different points of view are able to debate those things in a way that doesn’t lead to war, that doesn’t lead to overthrows, that doesn’t lead to violence.”
On the Senate floor, a reverence for its elaborate traditions of civility still survives like a living fossil from another era. It is one of the last good things in Washington that the rank partisan atmosphere has yet to destroy. It won’t be long now before that to is eroded away.
We should at least allow for the possibility that the invocation of Senate Rule XIX was not an attempt to silence Senator Warren, but to preserve the respect for each other that allows Senators, and our country, to debate pressing issues productively.
The partisan outrage mill was restocked with fresh grist on Tuesday night when Senators invoked a century-old rule to rebuke Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for remarks disparaging another Senator. For most people, it likely appeared to be politics as usual. Why should she be “silenced”? The backlash in the media has been swift, fierce, and almost universally wrong. The indignant reaction misunderstands the unique customs and traditions of the United States Senate. We asked a long-time former Senate staffer to explain why.
Let me state at the outset that I do not know anything about this particular incident. I do not know what led to one Senator invoking Senate Rule XIX , and I do not know what caused the other Senator to continue after being advised of the violation. I’m writing only to share my relevant experiences as a long-time Senate staffer, by way of illuminating what this is all about.
A Unique Institution
I love the Senate. It’s out of fashion to speak highly of any governmental institution these days, but so be it: it’s far from the only way I’m unfashionable. I believe it an important, vital institution, with much to teach us. It’s not a strictly majoritarian body. Individual Senators have significant power to gum things up, and this forces Senators to deal with each other with a certain amount of mutual respect. Not every legislative body around the world works this way.
Daniel Webster Addressing the United States Senate / In the Great Debate on the Constitution and the Union 1850. Credit: U.S. Senate Collection
The Senate also has certain rules of decorum. When you debate in the Senate, you don’t address other Senators directly. This means you don’t say “you” when referring to another Senator in debate – you address your remarks to the presiding officer, and you generally refer to a colleague as “the Senator from (Name of State)” rather than using his or her name. This helps to keep the focus on issues rather than on personal disputes.
The Senate observes other rules that are not only important in the context of the Senate, but which impressed me so much while working there that I have tried to import them into my personal conduct. You are not permitted to impugn another Senator or to characterize their motives.
“NO SENATOR IN DEBATE SHALL, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, BY ANY FORM OF WORDS IMPUTE TO ANOTHER SENATOR OR TO OTHER SENATORS ANY CONDUCT OR MOTIVE UNWORTHY OR UNBECOMING A SENATOR.” – U.S. SENATE RULE XIX
This, frankly, is great advice for everyone. So many debates we have would be more constructive if we would all agree to refrain from doing these things. None of us can ever really know another’s motives, so when we attribute someone else’s view to a nefarious motive, we’re usually ducking the issue in question to seek undeserved advantage. One reason the tenor of Senate debate doesn’t descend into the muck and mire associated with social media exchanges is precisely because of rules like Rule XIX against such tactics.
It is rare for the rule to be formally invoked. It is not so rare for Senators to be cautioned about it.
I have one recollection of an instance, which may be inaccurate in some respects, involving Senator Al Simpson in 1992, where the rule came up. Then-Senator Al Gore, running for Vice President at the time, had been taking what Senator Simpson viewed as very cheap shots out on the campaign trail at his friend President Bush. (Note, the Senate rules don’t prevent a Senator from saying whatever he wants outside of the Senate). Senator Simpson got a bellyful and went to the Senate floor to give a speech in which he complained about several things Senator Gore had done.
During the speech I believe it was Senator Pryor who came in, and looking very concerned, asked for time and reminded Senator Simpson of rule XIX and how it forbade him to impugn Senator Gore’s motives or character. Senator Simpson took the point and stopped. I don’t recall whether any of his words were excised from the record.
This, in my experience, is how it typically works. A Senator crosses the line by saying something that disparages another Senator’s character. They are then reminded of the existence of the rule, and typically will be apologetic and withdraw the remarks.
I do not know why that did not happen in this case. I will say this: it saddens me greatly to read a lot of the commentary I’ve read over the last 24 hours. I’ve read not one but two ridiculous, childish pieces respectively in the online editions of the Washington Post and the New York Times that sought to make a gender-conflict issue out of the fact that the Senator who invoked the rule was male, while the Senator who proceeded in spite of it was female.
Anyone who cares about the Senate must find this framing destructive and outrageous in the extreme. There are no gender specifications in Rule XIX. Every Senator is required to abide by it, and the sex of the Senator who invokes it is irrelevant. We can’t start carving out gender exceptions to the basic rules of Senate decorum to settle some perceived longstanding score about the politics of cross-gender communication.
The Senate rules of comportment are not about political positioning. They are about preserving respectful debate.
I’ve been equally frustrated by the speculations about the supposed strategy behind what one Senator or the other did. The Senate rules of comportment are not about political positioning. They are about preserving respectful debate. It shouldn’t matter who gains or loses politically from a violation or invocation of the rules.
View of the Senate of the United States in Session. By J. Rodgers. 1850 ca. Credit: U.S. Senate Collection
I realize mine is a lonely voice in a social media environment that seeks to construct political advantage out of anything and everything. But as someone who worked in the Senate a long time, I can tell you that the Senate rules of decorum are important, it’s good that they exist, and all Senators should respect them.
VIDEO
Sen. Warren reminded of Rule XIX
Sen. Steve Daines, serving as the Senate presiding officer, banged his gavel to remind Warren of Senate Rule XIX. This includes, he added after consulting with the parliamentarian, “quotes, articles and other materials.”
Sen. McConnell invokes Rule XIX
As Warren’s speech reached the 50-minute mark, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked Rule XIX to call Warren out of order, ending her remarks.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made his satirical debut on Saturday Night Live this weekend. President Lyndon B. Johnson might have some advice.
“IT IS PART OF THE PRICE OF LEADERSHIP OF THIS GREAT AND FREE NATION, TO BE THE TARGET OF CLEVER SATIRISTS.”
On the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year, President Johnson was a target of frequent and, at times, more bitter than funny satire. So, when Tom and Dick Smothers received a letter from LBJ himself, they were more than a little surprised. “It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation,” Johnson wrote, “to be the target of clever satirists.”
In full disclosure, Sean Spicer is a friend of mine. He ranks among the smartest communications professionals with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working. Melissa McCarthy’s send up of Sean bears little resemblance to the man I know. Or, for that matter, the man Americans see standing at the White House podium most days.
McCarthy’s approach to Spicer is notable not for the accuracy of its mimicry, but for the depth of its absurdity. That Sean Spicer, a patriot and man’s man who has long balanced a career at the highest levels of Washington with service in the U.S. Naval Reserve would be played by a woman is the pinnacle of absurdist shtick.
McCarthy’s gum chewing, super-soaker wielding, insult hurling, intemperate and utterly ludicrous White House Press Secretary is a cartoon character. Like the mischievous goof-ball elementary school student George Bush of the Comedy Central series “Lil Bush,” McCarty’s Spicer is a satire rooted in fanciful ridiculousness.
The Real Sean Spicer
The real Sean Spicer is a talented communicator and a gifted strategist. While I am not privy to the internal deliberations of the White House, I am more than confident that Sean is a consistent source of wise counsel to President Trump.
Sean Spicer talks with HLN’s Robin Meade, Jan. 19, 2017. (Instagram)
Sean Spicer has perhaps the hardest job in America. Each briefing he walks before an especially hostile press corps, all of whom Twitter apps at the ready to greet the slightest stumble with outrage, indignation and ruthless snark.
The job of any press secretary requires courage and nerves of steel. Sean Spicer faces a more oppositional press corps, often with a more difficult brief, than most of his predecessors. For him, this goes doubly. It is a tradition of White House press secretaries to pass down a flack jacket to their successor. Spicer’s predecessor, Josh Earnest, might have done well to have left him one of those bomb suits from the Hurt Locker.
It is the press secretary’s job to represent the White House’s point of view. Sean Spicer represents a highly unconventional President before a remarkably skeptical press. He does this all while keeping his wits about him and resisting the temptation to put a fist through the wall. It is a task that would drive a lesser man to madness.
Taking it all in stride
President Johnson’s letter was in reply to one the Smothers had sent to the former President after watching his televised address to the nation announcing he would not seek reelection. Impressed at what they saw as his act of courage, the Smothers wrote to Johnson apologizing for the lengths to which they went in mocking him. “We have taken satirical jabs at you,” they wrote, “and more than occasionally overstepped our bounds.” Perhaps Sean Spicer might someday receive a similar letter from McCarthy.
In the meantime, as a man who takes his job, but not himself, seriously Sean Spicer is taking it all in stride. “I think Melissa McCarthy needs to slow down on the gum chewing,” Spicer told Extra. “Way too many pieces in there.”
“I think Melissa McCarthy needs to slow down on the gum chewing. Way too many pieces in there.”
President Johnson’s reply to the Smothers contained great advice for anyone who finds themselves in the public spotlight. “May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humorous in our lives.” It is advice that Sean Spicer seems to be heeding.
Mario Savio, the face of the Berkeley Free speech movement in 1964 and Milo Yiannopoulos. CREDIT: Sam Churchill, Flickr (CC 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode); Facebook.com.
In 1964, Clarence Brandenburg, a KKK leader from Ohio, invited local media reporters to cover a rally where a handful of his supporters were in the audience. While Brandenburg himself was unarmed, several of his supporters in the audience were, and during the course of his speech, he stated that “we’re not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.”
While there is no denying that Brandenburg’s speech consisted of incredibly vulgar language, the Supreme Court looked closely at the threat of “revengeance” that he alluded to. In the aftermath of his speech, he was arrested for violating an Ohio law that criminalized the advocacy of the “duty, necessity or propriety of crime sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.”
The justices of the Supreme Court reversed this conviction, writing that:
The constitutional guarantees of free speech of free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The parallels between Brandenburg and Milo Yiannopoulos’ recent attempt to speak at UC Berkeley are obvious. Milo’s detractors argue there is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between what he has to say and what Brandenburg spoke about decades ago. However strongly people may disagree with Milo’s speeches, he does not threaten “revengeance,” now or down the road.
If only non-controversial speech were covered by the First Amendment, there would barely be a need for it to begin with, because people would have no objections to it.
Additionally, if only non-controversial speech were covered by the First Amendment, there would barely be a need for it to begin with, because people would have no objections to it. The First Amendment needs to cover topics that raise objections. 90 years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis stated that “fear of serious injury cannot alone Justify suppression of free speech and assembly…the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
The only thing preventing people from engaging in dialogue and discussion with Milo to challenge him on his ideas was the riot itself. The violence that erupted was shocking but far from unexpected, with the Berkeley Police Department receiving a letter that read, in part, “you can protect Milo but you will not be able to protect [College Republicans President] Jose Diaz.”
To its credit, Berkeley itself refused to cancel Milo’s appearance until the protests made it incredibly difficult for it to proceed (although it did charge College Republicans a security fee of several thousand dollars, which was waived after the speech failed to take place). Its chancellor’s office stated that “our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.”
“Not a Proud Night” for Berkeley
Prohibition against prior restraint of speakers has been a critical element of First Amendment doctrine in America for centuries. A university spokesman said that the night of riots was “not a proud night for this campus, the home of the free speech movement.” The protesters who shut down this event did so in direct violation of Berkeley’s wishes
This entire incident demonstrates how universities can either abide by their histories of supporting free speech or abandon them to the loudest voices at any given moment. As a student at the University of Chicago, I have been lucky to attend an institution that considers itself a leader in the free speech movement. Our history with free expression dates back at least to the 1930s, when a Communist Party leader spoke on campus. At the time, UChicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins defended the hosting of Foster, saying “our students … should have freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself.”
“free inquiry is indispensable to the good life, that universities exist for the sake of such inquiry, [and] that without it they cease to be universities.” – UChicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins
Hutchins later summed up the importance of open inquiry in higher education: “free inquiry is indispensable to the good life, that universities exist for the sake of such inquiry, [and] that without it they cease to be universities.” If only more presidents of universities had the conviction to echo that statement these days.
Fortunately, UChicago has continued to build on its legacy with Professor Geoffrey Stone’s Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression and Dean Jay Ellison’s famed letter to UChicago’s Class of 2020. With any luck, more schools will look to us as an example for the Classes of 2021 and beyond.
How does the Brandenburg standard apply to cases like this? The three key elements of this standard are held by many First Amendment experts to be: intent, imminence, and likelihood. However, the standard can’t quite be applied to Milo’s scenario, because the riots happened before he started to speak. That said, it is all but guaranteed that Milo’s speech would have been protected and that there would be no First Amendment justification to restrict his talk under the Brandenburg specifications.
A Supreme Court precedent that is also pertinent to this instance is that of Terminiello v Chicago, where Arthur Terminiello gave a speech that was critical of various racial groups, and where he also egged on the protesters, whom he referred to as snakes, slimy scum, and more. The protesters who were gathered outside smashed the building’s windows and threw stink bombs into the crowd packed inside. This doesn’t nearly approach the damage caused to Berkeley’s campus, which might run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Despite how Terminiello was arguably “asking for” the protesters to disrupt his event and destroy property, the Supreme Court held that “a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute….or even stir people to anger. [That] is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, [is] nevertheless protected against censorship and punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.” The definition of “substantive evil” is relatively subjective, but it is important to remember that Milo’s words did not produce the riots at Berkeley: protesters were rioting over the fact that he was going to speak later that day.
Berkeley was once home to a vibrant free speech community, but their work seems to be forgotten by the protesters of today.
Milo Yiannopoulos’ visit to UC Berkeley clearly demonstrates how much work needs to be done on college campuses. Berkeley was once home to a vibrant free speech community, but their work seems to be forgotten by the protesters of today. Unfortunately for them, the law is not on their side.
The first two weeks of the Trump Presidency have been a wild ride. The breakneck pace of executive orders, battles with the media and generally doing exactly as he said he was going to do has delighted Trump’s supporters even as it alarms official Washington and draws hackles from the media.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised simple, populist solutions to complex problems. Many in Washington assumed that when faced with the practicalities of governing, Trump would abandon his more immodest proposals and adopt a more conventional, pragmatic approach. The travel ban demonstrates that Trump and his team have no intention of doing anything of the sort.
A picture is emerging of a White House determined to make good on President Trump’s campaign pledges, critics be damned. Now, the travel ban is testing whether the nativist populism that won Trump the White House can be translated into workable government policy. The results so far are not promising.
The Courts Have a Vote
Developed by President Trump’s political advisors behind the backs of his national security team, the travel ban executive order was ill-conceived and poorly executed. It left hundreds stranded at airports, sparked protests across the country and unleashed a rash of legal challenges that promise a bruising legal battle in the weeks to come.
The language of the Executive Order is shoddily drafted and riddled with legal holes big enough for the ACLU to drive a truck through. As Benjamin Wittes observed on the Lawfare Blog, “This order reads to me, frankly, as though it was not reviewed by competent counsel at all.” The flaw in this approach is already becoming apparent.
On Saturday, the State Department ordered staff to resume processing visas from banned countries after a Federal Judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order.
“We have reversed the provisional revocation of visas,” a State Department spokesman told the Washington Post. “Those individuals with visas that were not physically canceled may now travel if the visa is otherwise valid.”
To Trump’s fans, the rapid-fire activity of his first weeks in office is evidence that a new day has arrived in Washington. Some bumps in the road are to be expected. But, it is also beginning to give an idea of how Donald Trump will govern that is not reassuring.
Politics Versus National Security
The White House contends that a broad ban on travel from seven predominately Muslim countries is necessary to protect the homeland from terrorism. Almost no one in the national security community agrees.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told the Washington Post that the order “inarguably has made us less safe. It has taken draconian measures against a threat that was hyped. The byproduct is it feeds the Islamic militant narrative and makes it harder for our allies to side with us.”
“This kind of thing is causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through the international system.” – James Mattis
He’s hardly alone. Some now within Trump’s own administration previously said similar things. In July, Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned against campaign trail talk of banning Muslims. “This kind of thing is causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through the international system.” While the order does not specifically ban muslims, Secretary Mattis, according to aides, remains strongly opposed.
Since 9/11, Presidents of both parties have been forced to make tough decisions about measures required to keep Americans safe. To President Trump and his supporters, the travel ban should be viewed through this same lens.
There is legitimate concern, for example, about sufficient vetting for Syrian refugees given the state of chaos in that country. If the ban was limited to a temporary halt on refugee admissions from Syria, it might be more defensible. But, banning all travel from seven majority Muslim countries is a draconian step to be taking on a hunch.
In the post 9/11 era, the balance of liberty and security has at times tilted towards security: enhanced screening at airports, tighter-restrictions on visas for travelers from certain countries, and expanded intelligence gathering. Most of these measures have drawn some degree of controversy.
Past Presidents took these actions reluctantly, after weighing the implications and circulating drafts among government agencies to smooth out rough edges and avoid unintended consequences. Yet, the travel ban was announced not with reluctance, but glee, underscoring its fundamentally political nature.
Politics Versus Reality
The travel ban is demonstrating the dangers of applying populist politics to sensitive national security issues. The haste with which it was developed and the dubious connection to national security has put the order on legally tenuous ground.
Last week, a White House aide described the order as a “massive success.” The comment has been widely mocked, but it all depends on what success means. Seen in terms of national security, process of government and rule of law, Trump’s travel ban indisputably is not a success at all. Yet, Trump’s supporters are thrilled. In terms of the politics of his base, it is indeed a “massive success.”
And here lies the challenge for the man now holding the reins of the federal government. Trump’s populist message depends on the premise that adversaries, muslim terrorists, illegal immigrants and Washington elites are the source of the country’s problems. While there are kernels of truth in each, solutions are not as simple as banning immigrants from muslim countries, building a wall, and putting an outsider in the White House. Ultimately, a Presidency is judged by results, not rhetoric.
President Trump is in a position any President would envy. With his party in control of Congress, a steadfastly loyal political base, and a country that mostly wants him to succeed, Trump has the potential to be a consequential President. But, at some point, he will have to decide what success means. Is it actually making America great, or just doing a lot of stuff and claiming he has done so?
Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court has been well-received — certainly among Republicans — and among at least a few Democrats as well. Despite combative early pledges to fight his nomination, Democrats may find it wise to keep their powder dry.
Gorsuch, a widely-respected judge currently serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, is beloved by conservatives but is by no means an ideologue. Gorsuch is known for his deep conviction that it is the responsibility of the legislative branch, as the people’s representatives, to write laws. Judges are merely its interpreters.
Gorsuch frequently describes his legal philosophy by quoting the man he will replace, the late Justice Antoine Scalia. “If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge,” Scalia said, “you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
“Legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future. But…judges should do none of these things in a democratic society.” – Judge Neil Gorsuch
Like Scalia, Gorsuch is an originalist. He believes that judge’s are bound by the text of the law regardless of personal ideology. “Legislators,” Gorsuch said in a speech earlier this year, “may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future. But…judges should do none of these things in a democratic society.”
This view often leads Judge Gorsuch to decisions that are not uniformly politically conservative or liberal — a trait that should recommend him to Democrats regardless of their view of their dim view of the President who nominated him.
The Wrong Fight
In today’s political climate, it is unwise to hold one’s breath waiting for an outbreak of bipartisan comity. Smarting from the Republicans refusal to confirm President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in the closing months of Obama’s term, liberals are spoiling for a fight.
Republicans justified blocking Garland’s nomination by arguing that it should be for the next President to decide who fills Scalia’s vacancy. As infuriating as this was for liberals, doing the same to Gorsuch at the start of Trump’s will prove much harder to justify.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Still, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement — almost certainly prepared in advance — immediately after Tuesday night’s announcement pledging a fight. But, in light of the largely positive reaction Gorsuch has received, at least some Democrats are having second thoughts.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, a member of the Judiciary Committee told CNN that despite the Republicans’ decision to block Judge Merrick Garland, it would be unwise to return the favor. “I’m not going to do to President Trump’s nominee what the Republicans in the Senate did to President Obama’s,” Coons said. “I will push for a hearing and I will push for a vote.”
Other Democrats also agree with that sentiment. “There’s no doubt what they did [on Garland] was wrong and unconstitutional. In the end, I don’t think we should play their game. Have a hearing and vote,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), an endangered Democratic incumbent, told Politico.
A Futile Effort
Blocking Gorsuch will prove a futile effort in any case. Republicans are almost certain to respond by employing the so-called “nuclear option,” a tactic employed by Democrats to overcome Republican objections to President Obama’s judicial nominees. By dispensing with the 60 vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster and allow a vote, Republicans could confirm Gorsuch with a simple majority. Forcing Republicans’ hand in an un-winnable fight over Gorsuch will establish a precedent that renders Democrats powerless to stop future Trump nominees.
“Democrats are worried, multiple aides said, about Republicans having an excuse to kill the filibuster on the Supreme Court now, and later use it to ram through an even more conservative nominee if there is another vacancy during Trump’s presidency.” – Politico
President Trump’s early executive actions, especially his ban on travel from seven Muslim countries, appalled Democrats. It has raised considerable concern that Trump is willing to stretch his executive authority beyond what Democrats, and some Republicans, believe permissible. This brings the role of the Judicial branch as a check on the President’s power into sharper focus. Gorsuch’s reputation for independence and his hostility towards ideological interpretations of the law suggest he may prove an ally to Democrats concerned about a Trump Administration running amuck.
Neal Katyal, an acting solicitor general in the Obama Administration, argued in a New York Times op-ed that “if the Senate is to confirm anyone, Judge Gorsuch…should be at the top of the list.” Katyal contends that “one basic criterion should be paramount: Is the nominee someone who will stand up for the rule of law and say no to a president or Congress that strays beyond the Constitution and laws? I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law.”
Even if Democrats succeed in blocking Gorsuch, the next nominee is not likely to be any more acceptable. As law professor Sasha Volokh, a Trump skeptic, wrote, “[i]f Trump’s first choice is, unexpectedly, good, take it, because the second choice will surely be worse.”
Blocking Gorsuch is Politically Risky
Blocking Gorsuch holds political risks for Democrats too. His reputation for fair-mindedness and the respect for him across the political spectrum make Gorsuch hard to demonize. With 23 Democrat Senate seats up for grabs next year, obstructing a candidate as well-qualified as Gorsuch runs the danger of a political backlash.
The battle over judicial nominees has a long history that dates back at least to Democrats’ intransigence towards George W. Bush’s judicial appointments. It was a favor returned in kind by Republicans under Obama. Former majority leader Harry Reid’s decision to employ the nuclear option and Republican refusal to confirm Merrick Garland were further escalations.
A quixotic battle against Gorsuch would establish a precedent that no nominee offered by an opposition party President will be acceptable. It is a position that Democrats may well regret if they succeed in retaking the White House in 2020. The best move is to call a truce on the judicial nominee war for now and give Neil Gorsuch a chance.
A collection of opposition research memos containing unverified allegations of collusion between Presidential-elect Donald Trump’s team and Russia to interfere in the 2016 election set off a firestorm. Trump has vehemently denied the allegations and suggested that the memos were leaked by U.S. intelligence agencies seeking to undermine his Presidency before it begins. Despite extensive efforts over several weeks, neither the FBI nor journalists have verified any of the charges.
WHAT HAPPENED
On Tuesday, CNN reported that U.S. intelligence agencies briefed Presidential-elect Trump on a 35-page dossier of opposition research memos, which included unverified allegations that Russia had compromising information on Trump and that several of his close associates were in regular contact with the Kremlin. Because neither the FBI nor CNN had been able to confirm if the claims were true, CNN declined to give further details.
CNN: Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him
Following CNN’s report, BuzzFeed News released the full 35-page document. It included details of the compromising information that the Kremlin allegedly had compiled on Trump, including a lurid descriptions of a bizarre sexual encounter between Trump and several prostitutes during a 2013 visit to Moscow. It also included explosive charges that Trump’s team worked closely with Russia in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
BUZZED: These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia
The release of the memos was met with angry denials from President-Elect Donald Trump who denounced them as “fake news” and suggested that U.S. intelligence agencies deliberately leaked them to undermine him. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper disputed this, saying that, to his knowledge, no one in the intelligence community was responsible for the leak.
DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump
WHO WAS BEHIND IT?
The memos were first commissioned by one of Trump’s GOP primary opponents. The Clinton campaign continued the investigation that led to the memo’s release. They were written by a former British spy, but are not the work of U.S. or any other intelligence agencies.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
The allegations are serious. If they prove true, it would be among the biggest scandals in history. However, while new information continues to emerge, the key allegations still remain unverified.