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#i heard a rumor that he voted for him in 2016 but not sure if it’s true
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AKDNFKEKKSMS IM READING 48 LAWS OF POWER BY ROBERT GREENE AND I HAD TO DO AN ASSIGNMENT IN LANGUAGE ARTS WHERE I HAD TO COMPARE THE IDEAS OF THE BOOK TO ANOTHER PIECE OF MEDIA SO I DID MYTHIC QUEST BECAUSE IT’S ALL IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR A WEEK AND SO MY TEACHER GOT A FUCKING PARAGRAPH ABOUT HOW BRAD BAKSHI’S LIFE PHILOSOPHY IS THE SAME THING THAT IS TAUGHT IN THE 48 LAWS OF POWER
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rockofeye · 3 years
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hey, any chance you can give an overview of what's happening in Haiti? i've been trying to follow the news but it's difficult to put together.
Hi there,
I can do my best, but I will tell y’all upfront that the situation in Haiti is multi-layered and multi-faceted with no easy answers or solutions.
The flashpoint for the most recent visible upheaval in the country is related to the current president, Jovenel Moïse. The runoff election he ran in was in 2015 and the results of that election were heavily contested; he was one of the final nominees that would move forward to the presidential election with just under 33% of the total vote but exit polls had him at less than 10% of the vote. Huge protests started and so the final vote was postponed until late 2016. Moïse was declared the winner with less than 25% of the vote, and was sworn in on February 7, 2017.
This is important because presidential term is 5 years, and this is the crux of the current debates and protests. The opposition party and Moïse’s critics maintain that his term ended on February 7, 2021 according to the original election mandate from 2016, and Moïse maintains he is to serve until February 7, 2022 according to when he actually took office. 
There are a LOT of different opinions (legal and otherwise) about this. Haiti’s highest judicial body (Conseil supérieur de la magistrature) ruled that Moïse’s term ended on February 7, 2021, and popular opinion is kind of mixed; split very evenly along class in Haiti. Folks who are upper class are generally believing Moïse when he says he will leave on February 7, 2022, working class and folks who are poorer say his term is over. Outside of Haiti, it seems like many Haitian think that he will leave in 2022 or that he needs to leave now to prevent further issues, whether his term is over or not.
Of course the US had to weigh in and Biden recognized that Moïse’s term ends in 2022, which is not helpful at all...the US has meddled enough in Haitian politics via sponsoring various coups and generally occupying the country. Biden’s administration has said that there need to be lawful elections to transition a president out of office, which is a a nice ideal...but what happens with the system is totally broken?
Moïse has not been a super popular president and in many ways has been downright ineffective. He ran on a platform with a lot of big ideas and a falsified folksy background to appeal to the common population in Haiti (many Haitian laugh when folks bring up that Moïse was a banana farmer...). He *has* brought electricity and fresh water to a bunch of communities, but that definitely doesn’t make up for his bullshit.
He’s done enough awful things that, in the eyes of many Haitians. He essentially destroyed Haiti’s parliament (sort of like Congress in the US...Haiti’s government systems are very Napoleonic in origin) by not allowing elections and has ruled by decree since 2019 (I believe), meaning no checks and balances in place. He has thrown the prime minister under the bus any time he receives criticism, and has had numerous prime ministers...he just fires and hires, and since the parliament is essentially hamstrung, he just appoints them.
In late 2020 and early 2021, he started looking more and more like a dictator. He had political opponents and high ranking officials arrested and jailed (senators, a supreme court justice, and the head of the national police, among others) and has made accusations of plots to assassinate him that are super suspicious and likely non-existent. He fired 3 supreme court justices, which is unheard of, and has doubled down on maintaining the office. He’s called for a re-write of the Haitian constitution which, if undertaken at any other time, could potentially be a good thing but right now it sure seems like a grab for power, as some of the proposed re-writes give the president’s office more power than it has right now. The referendum vote is scheduled for late June, and has a LOT of opposition.
So, that’s some background.
In late January, the opposition issued a statement that if Moïse refused to leave, the country would be locked down on February 7. There were already a lot of protests with a lot of shutdowns happening, but when he didn’t step down things, stuff got really hot.
Gangs in Haitii are serious business; they run neighborhoods and many of them are government or opposition sponsored with the goal of creating chaos to drive people to supporting one or the other and to create fear. Kidnappings skyrocketed, both of Haitians and foreign nationals. Folks may have seen the footage of folks walking into a church livestreaming a service and kidnapping the pastor and two others live on camera. It’s been serious and blatant. My step-son was at school when armed gunmen walked in and just grabbed two kids right out. 
Gangs have also been used to really instill fear. In poor neighborhoods, they have done things like break into people’s homes, drag them out, and kill them in the street, or burn a block to the ground. Gang leaders say it is in response to various other things happening in the country, but that’s crap...gangs are used as tools to control. 
In response to the heightened violence and the kidnapping of at least two lawyers, the entire judicial branch of the government--all of the courts and associated offices--went on strike on February 15, which halted all legal proceedings in a legal system that is deeply broken already (up to 90% of people held in Haitian jails have no charges filed against them). There was a massive prison break in the capital in February where close to 500 people escaped and around 50 were killed during it and in the aftermath, including a gang leader shot at a police checkpoint. A group of police responding to gang violence in a neighborhood in the capital were massacred and the gang responsible refused to turn over their bodies. It’s been a lot.
In the last week, the large gangs (400 Mawozo, the G9 alliance, etc) have agreed to stop kidnappings, which is a huge deal. It’s possible that this is in response to veiled threats coming from the UN and a Caribbean nation alliance about peacekeeping forces to address violence and ensure elections. It seems that Port-au-Prince is the most volatile area (which is pretty average honestly), with much of the other parts of the country not experiencing the same level of violence.
Also in the mix is the deeply disheartening situation with the Dominican Republic. DR continues to deport Haitians and people of Haitian descent regardless of their citizenship status, meaning that hundreds and hundreds of people are being forced to go to Haiti, even if they have never lived there before, do not speak the language, and have no connections to help them. It is an absolutely overwhelming crisis that there has not garnered much foreign notice. At least 200,000 Haitians and folks of Haitian descent have been forcibly removed, with that number likely being much higher. There have been a lot of rumors about extrajudicial killings by police of Haitians in the DR, but of course there is no official statement on that.
These actions by the DR are heavily rooted in colorism/anti-Blackness and anti-Haitianismo, and, if we are really honest, this is a type of ethnic cleansing that has been utilized long-term by the DR.
In all of this, COVID19 has almost been a non-issue. Haiti has not seen the level of pandemic the rest of the world has. Folks are paying attention to the lack of transmission and, when there is a positive case detected, non-symptomatic infection. A lot of folks I know in Haiti don’t know anyone who has had COVID or even heard of anyone having it. Of course, Haiti is well-versed in pandemic management (thank UN cholera-bearers) and folks are used to taking preventative measures so folding in things like handwashing and extra disinfection have been pretty easy for lots of folks.
All of these things have increased the reach of poverty, lack of food and basic needs, and general misery for many folks living in Haiti. Haiti has been dealing with the long-term effects of colonization and occupation since basically forever; Haiti struggles to remain independent in the face of crushing poverty, corrupt governments, and many-strings-attached foreign aid. 
So...that’s convoluted basics. I hope this provides some context; please let me know if I can clarify anything.
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emisonme · 5 years
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Lauren's path..........
I'm not even sure, where to begin. People are banging their heads against the wall, trying to figure out, what the hell is going on, with Lauren and her career.
Again, the first thing you need to understand, is Lauren is still with Syco. If Simco Ltd. owns the copyright to her solo music, she is still under contract with them, period!
It's pretty clear, the initial rumors that Camila and Lauren had solo options in their contracts, were correct. It's also clear, Syco picked up those solo options, as they are the only two still connected to Syco. Syco didn't have solo options on the other girls, but Sony still had control over their recording contracts. After the hiatus, with the exception of Ally, they split the other girls between the Sony Labels.
Camila stayed with Syco/Epic. Lauren is with Syco/Columbia. Normani went to a RCA imprint, with distribution through RCA. Dinah went to LA Reid's new label, that is still connected to Sony. Sony cut Ally loose, and she signed with Atlantic, which is a WMG label.
OK, now, we got the "rumor" that Lauren was signing with Columbia, back in January of last year. A year ago. If they were spreading the "rumor", then the deal was pretty much done. So, she has been a Columbia artist, for at least a year now.
Lauren has said, she didn't start writing her own MUSIC, until the beginning of 2018. It appeared, she was contradicting herself, when she stated she wrote MTT 2/3 years ago, a long ass time ago, and before she started "dating" Ty. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt, and say, she wasn't necessarily lying or contradicting herself.
We all know, Lauren has been writing poetry, and song lyrics, for years. Even before X-Factor. But, lyrics are not the only aspect of a song. Those lyrics have to be set to music, to make a song. I can believe her, when she said she didn't start writing or composing music to go with her poetry/lyrics, until last year, because I think that's what she actually meant...If not, it's just another bullshit lie, among many.
Moving on. In June, they had her opening for Halsey's SA tour, where she performed three of her new solo songs, Expectations, Toy, and Inside. The fans started demanding the studio version of Expectation, so in October, we got it, with a video. Columbia never sent it to radio. It was a promotional single.
In November, she performed two new songs, at the MTV vote after party. They were More Than That and Freedom. The fans asked for MTT to be her next single, and a few days ago, that's what they got. The video will be released Friday. Columbia hasn't set a radio impact date, as of yet. Maybe they are waiting to see what the video will do.
I, too, will wait for the video, to do any kind of analysis of MTT. I will say, the production was subpar. Whoever did the sound mixing, done Lauren a definite disservice.
Lauren said, she is still trying to figure out her sound. That translates to, the Label is still trying to figure out how to market her and her music. It is the Labels responsibility to market the artist and promote their music. The label will monitor the internet, and collect the data, to find out what a particular artists demographic is, and they will cater the artist, to that demographic.
The artist will compile a big song library, for each album. Usually for the first solo album, they will have around 30/40 songs in the can, ready to choose from. The artist and their manager, will work with the label A&R, to choose the best songs for the album, based on the data collected. Columbia had multiple chances to collect that data. BTM, AN, Strangers, IYP, Expectations, Toy, Inside, MTT, and Freedom. They were all used for data mining. The Label A&R will use that data, to guide the artist in the direction to best connect to the public in her demographic.
Once they figure out Lauren's marketing strategy, it is up to the label to promote the music, to the GP. Thy choose the official singles. They choose when and if a single gets sent to radio. If it doesn't get sent to radio, it gets labeled a promo single, and it's up to the artist and their fans, to push it.
Radio looks to Shazam, and the amount of streams a promo single gets, to decide if they want to dedicate air time to it, or not. The more Shazam streams, the better chance it gets ait time. That's why people are always reminding the fans to stream on Shazam, as well as Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming sites.
It's also, usually, up to the label, to get a single put on popular playlists, and which, if any, television appearances for the single.
It's up to the artists management, to promote the artist. They do this, in conjunction with the label. It is the managements job, to create and control the artists/brands public image. They manage how the public sees the artist, when the public sees the artist, and where the public sees the artist.
The PR Teams and Talent Agents, work in conjunction with the management, to get the artist out there, to get attention from the media and therefore, the public.
It is the artist themselves, that has the most important role in their own career. The Label can market the artist, the management can get them attention, but it is completely up to the artist, to make a connection to fans and potential fans. If an artist isn't making a connection to the public, then the rest of it doesn't even matter.
Lauren is more than capable of making that connection. The problem is, her image is turning people off, and I'm not just talking about fans, but also potential endorsements. Her public image, right now, is not a good one, and she knows it.  Unfortunately, her damn managers would rather promote Ty and a dog, more than Lauren.
Don't get me wrong, Gracie is cute and Lauren's interaction with her, is adorable. I know they made sure she, and her dog, got nominated for one of the most ridiculous awards ever, but I'd much rather Lauren be promoted and recognized for her talent, than her cute little pet.
Columbia needs to get her a presenter spot at the Grammy's, so she can walk the carpet, and be seen on prime time television. They need to get her a performance spot on the iHeart music awards. Those air on March 19. Hopefully Columbia is ready to release an official single, and she can perform it there, like Camila did.
Honestly, her next single needs to be about something personal. Something inspirational. It doesn't have to be a slow ass ballad, but it needs to be about something that makes folks want to get to know Lauren. Expectations would have been a good choice...IF they hadn't turned everyone off to it, by saying she wrote the damn thing about Ty not being there to cuddle when she wanted him to. (that was literally one of the dumbest explanations for a song, I had ever heard)
I really don't think MTT is that song, either. The subject matter has turned even her own fans off. (I have my own theory about the song, but I'm waiting for the video to see if I'm even close to right) The problem with MTT, is the subject matter automatically takes people's minds to her "cheating" with Ty. Even though she has said, she wrote it before she even started "dating" him. The lyrics just took people there, and that was a turn off, for many. Her next single needs to be something that represents her. Not her fucking "boyfriend", not her fucking dog, but her.
She has plenty of music ready to go, so they really need to get her out there, performing at some of these Festivals. They may not all know who she is at those things, but that's the point, to get her out there, seen and heard.
She really needs to do some of the more popular radio shows, like Zane Lowe. She did good on Zack Sang, but Zane is a pretty good interviewer. He doesn't throw softball questions, so she needs to be ready, and willing to answer all the tough questions.
She hasn't been to Europe or Great Britain since what, 2016. She needs to get over there and show her face. Do some interviews, especially BBC Radio, or whatever it's called. Really, she needs to be doing a lot more than walking around propping Ty's ass up, and packing around her pooch.
Maverick needs to do their damn job, and take her for a sit down with the Spotify and YouTube folks, and make a deal with them, herself. Her Label isn't doing much, but she can talk to them and get them to sponsor her and promote her, for exclusive content. That will get her on all the popular playlists, and billboards. She doesn't need to rely on Columbia to do all this shit for her. She can help herself out, as well.
They need to scrub her SM, especially her Instagram, of anything that might be deemed problematic. The big Brands will not even consider her, for Celebrity Endorsements, if all they see is her partying it up, smoking dope all the damn time.
Lauren is a solo artist, now. She is no longer handcuffed, by a group image, or the set plan for that group. As a solo artist, she does have more say in her career, but she isn't as free as she is letting on. She has more freedom, than she had as a member of 5H, though.
Lauren needs to take some of that new found freedom, sit her management team down, tell them what she wants and expects for her career. If Maverick isn't willing to manage her career, the way she expects them to, then she needs to fire their ass, and find a manager who will.
Yes, she can fire them. As a solo artist, she pays them 15% of her earnings. If they aren't earning that 15%, she can hire someone who will. Camila did. Normani did. She can, too.
They need to put an end to all these stupid narratives. They need to.....You know what, I could sit here all day, and say what I think they all should do, but I'm not Lauren, her manager, or her Label. Maybe they have it all figured out, and are just slow walking her, I don't know. But, I do know, what they have chosen to do thus far, isn't really working, and it's really pissing me off.
Lauren has the talent to succeed in this damn business. She has the intelligence to succeed in this damn business. I just hope she has the will to succeed in this damn business. It's not really going to get any easier, at least not for a while....I really hope she achieves that dream she had when she was younger. I hope she finds that solo success, she always knew she was capable of. I know I'm rooting for her.
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hillaryisaboss · 6 years
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8/25/2016: Hillary was the first to call out Trump's racist history and dog whistling to racists.
This speech should be required viewing. Required reading. The woman who got 3 million more votes called it. She was 100% right. She had the crystal ball. If only a few more of us had listened.
This speech needs to be burned into our memories forever:
"After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.
But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.
Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him."
~Hillary Rodham Clinton; 8/25/2016
She warned us.
"Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.
It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.
He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.
His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
...
It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!
Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.
But what he’s doing here is more sinister.
Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.
It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.
This is what I want to make clear today:
A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.
If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?
Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.
After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.
But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.
Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.
When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.
Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.
Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.
The pattern continued through the decades.
State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.
And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”
He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.
In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.
And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.
Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.
If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.
Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.
We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”
Think about that.
The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.
Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.
But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.
This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.
His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.
The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.
When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.
And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.
Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.
Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.
He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.
Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.
His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.
This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.
It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.
Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
This man wants to be President of the United States.
I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.
In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.
The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.
Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.
It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.
Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.
But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.
And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.
He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.
He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.
He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.
Millions of them.
And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.
Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.
But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”
And then what?
What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.
Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?
Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.
Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.
Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.
Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.
So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.
Maybe.
But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.
Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.
The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.
To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:
“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”
“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”
“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”
That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.
Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”
Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.
This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”
No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.
Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”
Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”
The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”
The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.
This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.
Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.
Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race -- that’s who Trump wants by his side.
The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.
Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.
Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.
He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.
American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.
We should, too.
All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.
Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.
On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.
“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.
Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.
No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.
And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.
There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”
We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.
He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”
This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.
It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.
Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.
Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”
Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.
At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”
After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this.”
We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?
This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.
Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.
The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”
In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”
We need that kind of leadership again.
Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.
And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don't.
For all Americans.
Because I believe we are stronger together.
It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.
Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.
Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?
When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.
So let’s keep moving forward together.
Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.
Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.
Thank you, and may God bless the United States."
~Hillary Rodham Clinton; 8/25/2016
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The woman who warned us.
Trump is a con-man propaganda artist:
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Never Normalize Trump.
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#strongertogether
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lesbian-sora · 6 years
Text
Only Fools
Summary ~ School is hard. School is harder when you’re a loser who has more bullies than friends. School is even harder when you have a crush on the most amazing guy in the world, even if your friends can’t see it. School is damn impossible when your friends coerce you into participating in the school play with the most amazing guy in the world. 
Dan and Phil’s experience falls into the impossible category, but maybe together (with some help from the King himself) they can make it out alive and well.
Tags ~ Fluff, high school AU, friends to lovers, theatre kids, mutual pining, slow burn, slight angst, not actually unrequited love
Words ~ 7106/~35K
Warnings ~ Swearing
Rating ~ Teen
Author’s Note ~ Hi guys! This fic was originally supposed to be one of my fics for Phandom Big Bang 2016, but things came up. I recently blew the dust off of it, and I really liked it, so it’s getting revamped and published! Updates will most likely be once a month for the next 4 months (I may up that posting schedule if writing/editing goes well and people actually like it) and I look forward to all of you getting to read it! Also, this will be my first chaptered fic that I’m posting one part at a time, so that’s exciting!
Prompt me!
Buy me a coffee!
Next chapter!
Read on AO3
                                                     Act I Scene I
There honestly weren’t very many people Louise Pentland disliked. She was bubbly and personable, meaning she got along with just about everyone she came in contact with, and she quite liked it that way. Everything from her approachable smile to her mothering attitude made it so people were drawn to her and she to them.
That being said, she absolutely despised Phil Lester.
Was it unfair, petty, and totally unreasonable? Absolutely. In all honesty, Phil would probably be voted nicest guy in the school, if anyone were to take a poll. Was he was a bit weird? Most certainly.  However, it was a completely harmless weird. It was quirky and odd like that store on the edge of town that dealt solely in the manufacture and sale of cat-themed gnomes. If she were to be straight with herself, she would admit that Phil had never knowingly or unknowingly harmed, damaged or even seriously upset herself or anyone she remotely knew, simply because that wasn’t the type of person Phil was. No, her dislike of Phil wasn’t his fault, and he had no idea it was even happening. Her dislike boiled down to one thing and one thing only.
“Louise! You’ll never guess what Phil did today!” Dan gushed, collapsing in the seat next to her.
Louise didn’t bother to look up from her compact where she was very carefully reapplying her lip gloss. She knew Dan was flushed lightly with a wide, dopey smile and that his eyes shone as if every star was compacted down into glitter that was dumped into hot chocolate. He always looked like that when Phil was brought up. Which was a lot. “I’m guessing from your normal reports that he was walking down the hall and breathing.”
“No,” Dan scowled and wadded a bit of paper into a tiny ball and flicked it at her, offering a sheepish grin after it landed in her makeup. “I actually talked with him a bit today.”
“Dan, we’ve discussed this before. Saying ‘Hi, Phil!’ and then hiding your face and running away before he can respond doesn’t count as talking to him.”
“Someone’s in a mood,” Dan pouted. “And I’ll have you know this was a totally real and legit conversation we had. Some dick head knocked into me on the way out here and Phil saw and helped me pick all my stuff up and everything. He even gave me his hand to help me stand up!”
Louise cocked a brow. “Really? Honestly, Dan I almost didn’t think you had it in you,” she said, ignoring his squawks of protest. “What all did you boys talk about?”
“He saw my piano book and asked if I played,” Dan said dreamily, the look on his face making it more than apparent that he was reliving the moment in perfect clarity again and again until it was ingrained in his memory. “And so I told him yeah, but I was awful and then I thought he was going to just leave but he walked with me almost the whole way here and he saw me in the play last year, Louise! He saw me and remembered me and told me I did a good job! Oh my god, it was probably the best moment of my life.”
Louise rolled her eyes, but smiled good naturedly, more than pleased over how happy her friend was. However, there was one thing that always bugged her about the whole situation. “Dan, darling, why Phil of all people? I mean he’s nice and all, and, sure, he’s not awful to look at, but he’s just so strange. Saying you could do better is probably the understatement of the year.”
Dan looked at her, glaring at her as if she’d just spat in his mother’s face and told her that her cooking was a disgrace (which she hadn’t) and he was personally offended (which he probably was). “Okay, first of all,” he started and Louise took a deep breath, already regretting her words and preparing for the sermon that was soon to follow. “Phil Lester is an unusual beauty so rare and perfect and we don’t deserve him. Second, he’s got an absolutely brilliant mind and we should all count ourselves lucky to hear anything that brain decides to gift us with. Third-”
“Mr. Howell,” Mrs. Bronwell interrupted from the front of the room, “as much as I’m sure we’d all love to hear you expound on the virtues of Mr. Lester, I, personally, get paid to teach you math, and I’d quite like to do so at this moment. If that’s not an imposition on you, of course.”
Dan blushed bright red all the way from his collar bones (and possibly farther, who knew) to the very tips of his ears. “Sorry, Mrs.,” he said, sinking down a bit more in his chair. “I’m done.”
“Oh, I highly doubt that,” Louise scoffed, quite unintentionally. There were a few scattered titters around the room and Dan gave Louise a long, hard, stare. The whole school probably knew about Dan’s crush on Phil just from him talking loudly and passionately about how wonderful the other boy was at any chance he got, so it’s not like there was any new gossip being delivered so he didn’t really feel the need to be properly embarrassed. But, the sting of betrayal was still there and he was sure to let her know he felt about it.
“Thank you for your contribution, Miss Pentland,” Mrs, Bronwell smiled, “but we really must get on with our lesson. Now, today we’re studying logarithms - James, don’t you roll your eyes at me. Yes, I saw you just fine.”
Now that the lesson had begun and he was finally free of all judgement, Dan let himself drift off quite happily into his thoughts, where his daydreams once again found themselves centered upon the subject of Phil Lester. How kind his smile was when he was offering him help. How he seemed genuinely interested as Dan flushed and fumbled over the explanation of his mediocre piano skills. How his hand was so soft but sure and he held Dan’s own and pulled him to his feet. As his teacher went on about the ins and outs of math things he didn’t care about Dan drew little doodles, of hearts and Phil coming to rescue him from the horrors of sports. He sighed happily and looked out the window thinking about Phil Lester, unknowing that somewhere in the school Phil was sighing happily and looking out a window thinking about Dan Howell.
                                                     Act I Scene II
“I found out he plays piano, Peej!” Phil beamed, waving his hands around for emphasis. “That’s so impressive, honestly. I wonder if he can play anything else.”
“I think I heard somewhere that he plays drums, but that could just be a rumor.” PJ paid the conversation little mind, far more focused on the poster he was designing for the school play.
“Eh, he seems the type,” Chris added helpfully. “You know: loud, obnoxious and in your face.”
Phil scowled at his now snickering friends. “He is not. He’s always really sweet and quiet when I talk to him.”
“Yeah?” Chris challenged. “Well, I had a history class with him one time and his own friend asked the teacher if he could change seats because Dan was distracting him too much.”
“Sean said that one time when they were taking a chemistry exam Dan started singing the periodic table. Out loud,” PJ added helpfully.
“He’s boisterous, maybe,” Phil conceded, “But he’s probably hilarious which is why his friend was so distracted and besides, learning a song to memorize the periodic table is pretty smart.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Mate, we could tell you that Dan killed Mother Theresa and you’d just say ‘I mean, she probably deserved it.’” PJ chuckled next to him and Phil simply shot him another dirty look. “Anyway, as much as you love talking about Dan we really ought to move on because me and Peej, well, we don’t enjoy it near as much as you.”
Before Phil could argue PJ chimed in with a, “Help me decide on which one of these posters is better. Mr. Walters wants them up by this afternoon so people have plenty of time to sign up before auditions next month.” He showed them a couple of hand drawn posters, one featuring a more 60’s theme with psychedelic rainbow patterns and little people scattered all around doing various theatre things whilst the other  was more focused on space, complete with little aliens all over it. Both said in clear letters “Join this year’s spring musical! All You Need Is Love: A 60’s space drama written and produced by PJ Liguori and Sophie Newton. Auditions after school in the auditorium on 8/8”
“I like the space one,” Phil said.
“No, no. The 60’s is way better,” Chris argued. “It’s more fun looking and approachable. Everybody likes the 60’s.”
“No, everybody likes space,” Phil insisted.
“No, you like space, you big nerd.”
“I think we should ask the cards.”
“Phil,” PJ groaned, “you can’t rely on your tarot cards for every decision you have to make.”
“Yes, I can. I asked the cards and they said it was fine,” Phil smirked, pulling out his deck of Pokemon cards. He was honestly rather proud of them; he had spent an entire afternoon dedicated to learning each of the 56 cards in the full tarot deck and assigning a Pokemon to each one, then an entire month (and more money than he’d care to admit) collecting every single card until his deck was finally complete. He closed his eyes and focused. “Alright, we’re just doing a yes or no question so we can just use the Major Arcana, or would you rather do a full reading with all the cards?”
PJ rolled his eyes, but said, “Just the Major is fine. You can do a full reading when it’s more important decisions.”
Phil nodded, separating out the twenty two cards needed. “Okay, PJ, I’m going to start shuffling. Focus really hard on your question and when you think it’s time, tell me to stop.”
PJ closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply and said, “Stop.”
Immediately, Phil quit shuffling and laid the cards out in a neat row. “Is this good, or do you want me to shuffle again?”
“That’s fine. My question is ‘Should I use the space themed poster?’”
“Alright, choose a card.”
PJ chose one fourth from the left and Phil flipped it over, revealing a card of Mew. Phil grinned, before announcing: “You got The World, which talks about your conscious and unconscious joining and how you’re facing an important juncture that will make your path for the future clear. It also means that you’re going to gain true insight to the nature of yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, but is it a yes or a no?” Chris said impatiently.
“It’s a yes,” Phil said with a smug smirk.
“And how do we know you’re not bullshitting us to get your way?”
“Well, if you think about it there was the whole conscious, unconscious thing, and he clearly preferred the space one, considering how much time he spent on it.” They looked at PJ for confirmation who shrugged and nodded with a sheepish grin. “Plus if you have the play be ‘you’, having this decision be insight into the true nature of yourself makes sense since it’s really more about space with a sixties flair than sixties with space themes.” Chris frowned thoughtfully, slowly nodding his head before Phil grinned and added, “Also, you don’t.”
“Why you absolute-”
“Stow it,” PJ hissed. “Mr. Bedsole just walked in.” And with that, the three quieted down to focus on the droning lecture about World War II.
                                                    Act I Scene III
“But you said we were going out for coffee today!” Dan pouted at Louise, who, in her defense, looked absolutely heartbroken denying him.
“I’m sorry, Dan,” she said. “I really am, but Chummy says there’s a huge sale going on in Brighton today and I really don’t want to miss it. I promise we can go tomorrow.”
“I do swear that it’s a one day sale,” Zoe added earnestly, looking almost as remorseful as Louise. “I’ll buy you a drink tomorrow to make up for it.”
“That’s all well and good for tomorrow, but what am I meant to do for today?” he whined.
“You could always come with us?” Louise suggested weakly. “We can get coffee at the station to have on the train?”
Dan sighed, quietly enough that the two girls didn’t hear . “As much as I do honestly enjoy going shopping with you two, I’m really not up for a two hour train ride today. However, if you see anything you think I’d like, I wouldn’t say no to some more peace offerings for bailing on me today.”
“You cheeky thing!” Zoe laughed, gently pinching his cheek. “You’re a right mess and a half, you are.”
He batted her hand away with a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Seriously, though. What am I going to do today? My mum's going to be out until five or later and I left my key at home. Do you want me to just wander around Reading lost and alone that whole time?”
“Oh, please,” Louise laughed with an eye roll. “Tyler exists, so you know there’s no way you can be bored for too long.”
“My ears are on fire right now,” Tyler sang, joining them at their table. “What are we talking about? Besides me, of course.”
“Well, someone ditched me to go look at- What is it exactly that you’re after?”
“Clothes,” both girls said in unison.
“Going to that Brighton sale?” Tyler asked with a knowing smirk. “I’d join you, but honestly, I don’t want to.”
They all laughed together before Dan piped up, “Anyway, they’re leaving me for clothes and have put my afternoon activities in your command.”
Tyler winced. “I’m sorry, Dan-”
“No!”
“I have a date!” Tyler defended. “And, boo, you know I think you’re the best thing since sliced bread, but you third wheeling me isn’t going to get me laid.”
Dan cast him a betrayed look. “So, basically what you’re telling me is I’m basically screwed? Carrie’s busy with theatre, you’re going on a date, these two would rather pet garments they can’t afford then get coffee with me, and Sean is probably off sucking face with Signe.”
“You could always just follow Phil home and sit outside like a lost puppy and hope he lets you in,” Tyler suggested, somewhat helpfully.
“Why don’t you actually fuck off?” Dan snapped,as his face turned scarlet. “That was one time, okay?”
“You stood outside his house in the rain for an hour pretending you thought it was someone else’s house before you realized nobody was home.”
“That was two years ago!”
“I still can’t believe it happened at all.”
Dan buried his face in his hands to hide his blushing cheeks. “You guys are the absolute worst people in the world and I hate every single one of you,” he groaned.
Tyler reached over and patted his cheek fondly. “Oh, boo, we know that’s not true. Who else would listen to you wax poetic about Phil?”
Again the three laughed together. “I’m still without anything to do this afternoon,” Dan pointed out.
“Can’t you just break in?” Tyler suggested. “I do that at my house all the time.”
“My mom routinely locks all the windows so mine is the only one open and there’s no way I can get to the second floor.”
“You could hang out with Sean and Signe,” Louise offered. “I’m sure they’d at least try to contain themselves while you’re around.”
“Yeah, but even when they’re not trying to climb into each other’s mouth I still always feel like I’m third wheeling so fucking hard. And not like tricycle third wheel either.”
“Why don’t you just go hang out at the coffee house on your own or go nerd shopping?” Zoe recommended. “You have your phone and headphones, right? Just sit in a corner and ignore everyone.”
Dan let out a long suffering sigh. “I guess that’s my only option, unless I want to go to the library or something.” He sighed and complained, “Why is there nothing to do here?”
“There’s plenty to do, you’re just too immersed in your laptop to experience any of them,” Louise laughed. “Chummy and I can always find plenty to do.”
“You have no idea what a town with nothing to do looks like, sweetheart,” Tyler scoffed. “Jackson was like a third this size and a good hour away from anything even remotely interesting.”
“Yeah, well, this place being better than your hometown is zero help right now. Somebody give me something to do.”
“You could just Google it and do the tourist-y things that pop up,” Zoe beamed. “Me and Alfie did that one time and it was loads of fun.”
“That sounds like a really great date,” Dan agreed, a dash of sarcasm in his tone. “However, since I’m a sexually ambiguous nerd who can’t properly talk to anyone outside of you guys, there’s very little chance of me getting a date any time soon. Plus it’s pouring and I wouldn’t want to wander around Reading in the rain even if I had a date.” Tyler took this moment to mutter about how he’d done it for Phil before, but quieted down when Dan gave him a stern glance.
“Well, whatever you decide to do, I wish you luck,” Louise said, taking out her phone to check the time. “However, Chummy and I must be getting on as our train leaves in less than an hour.”
“Bye, Louise. Bye Zoe,” Dan and Tyler chimed together. The two girls laughed and gave their final farewell hugs before leaving, leaving Dan and Tyler alone.
“So, who is this guy, anyway?” Dan asked, picking at his fingernails.
“Uh, his name is Michael and I met him on Tinder.”
“Phil’s middle name-”
“Is Michael. Yes, I know,” Tyler teased. “You’ve told us all more than once.”
Dan merely rolled his eyes and said, “So, Michael. Is this a guy you might actually like to date or is he just a casual hookup?”
“I don’t know, honestly,” Tyler shrugged. “He seemed nice enough while we were messaging but not exactly my kind of guy, you know? I may just keep in contact with him to hang out with on Fridays when I’m bored because somebody is too invested in Mario Kart to go party with me.”
“Please. You and I both know that I’m probably the last person you’d want to go with you to a party. I’d just stand awkwardly in a corner playing on my phone all night and making everyone who dared to talk to me feel bad because they wouldn’t understand a single word I mumbled.”
Tyler cast him yet another sympathetic look and Dan swore he was going to rip his eyebrows out if another person looked at him as if he was the dog they were leaving behind at the shelter. “Have you considered hanging out with Carrie this afternoon? Like, I know you said you weren’t doing theatre this year-”
“The four hours I spent locked in a janitor’s closet for being in the school play said I wasn’t doing theatre this year.”
Tyler narrowed his eyes at the interruption, but continued. “Anyway, you said you weren’t going to be in the play, but I’m pretty sure they’re just doing like pre-pre-pre-play stuff today. Hanging up posters and the like. I mean, it’s something at least.”
Dan considered his options for a moment. While he had sworn off acting for the year, he really liked most of the theatre kids he hung out with last time. Besides, it was completely harmless and he did always enjoy spending time with Carrie. “Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, if it is horrible I can always pretend my grandma is in the hospital or something to get out of it.”
“That’s the Dan Howell spirit we all know and love,” Tyler grinned, clapping him on the back.
This will be fine. What could go wrong?
                                                    Act I Scene IV
There was no way this was happening.
“PJ, I can’t go in there,” Phil hissed, physically keeping his friend by his side and out of that room. For in that room sat none other than Dan Howell, looking perfect as always whilst he lounged next to Carrie, who was laughing along at something he said. “I thought you said he wouldn’t be here today!”
PJ shrugged, clearly not seeing the problem and Phil had never felt so betrayed. “He said he wasn’t coming back last year, but maybe he changed his mind. Or maybe he’s just helping a friend hang posters. Who knows? You might if you go in there and talk to him.”
“I can’t let him see me like this,” Phil refused. “I took out my contacts last lesson because my eyes were all itchy and the redness still hasn’t gone down and I look terrible.”
“Maybe he’s into the whole robot look.”
“You’re not helping!”
“Look, mate,” PJ sighed. “You can stay and help or you can go home and sulk, but either way I’ve got to be in there to take charge of this whole shindig and I can already feel Sophie glaring at me for being late. I know you don’t look one hundred percent your best ever but it’s a Monday afternoon after school and nobody looks great, and I swear to god if you tell me Dan looks amazing I will never let you borrow my Legend of Zelda games ever again.” Phil gave him a sheepish grin. “And for what it’s worth your face shape works really well with those glasses and the redness is pretty much gone.”
Phil smiled softly at his friend. “You always know what to say, Peej.”
PJ smirked and winked back at him. “It truly is a gift. Now come on, let’s go hang some posters and get some theatre nerds hyped about a play.”
As the two walked in a kind of hush fell over the gathered students and Phil couldn’t help but notice the panicked look Dan gave Carrie as he passed by them, taking a seat next to Chris and Alexandra. He leaned over to point it out to Chris, but he merely shot him a look before pointedly focusing on PJ and Sophie at the front of the room. Phil huffed; he knew why he was being shushed, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Okay, everyone, thanks for being here!” PJ beamed at the eight students sprawled across various chairs and desks. “We really appreciate your help. Does anyone have any questions?”
“Why don’t you tell them what exactly it is that they’re helping with?” Sophie suggested from behind him with a smile and a fond roll of the eyes.
PJ gave her a crooked grin in thanks before returning his attention to the crowd. “Right, I should. Well, as you all should know the school puts on a musical every spring, and if you didn’t know then you do now. Anyway, as this is our last year Mr. Walters has agreed to put on a play that Sophie and I wrote, and he’s put us in charge of everything from production to advertisement. Today we’re putting up posters around the school to let everyone know about the auditions that are happening next month, giving them plenty of time to pluck up the courage to sign up since that’s probably the hardest part of school plays for a lot of us.” There were a few scattered chuckles, and PJ carried on. “Since there are ten of us and five main areas we need to put these up, we’re going to be splitting into teams of two, and each team is going to get twenty posters to hang up. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but we want these everywhere. I don’t want there to be a single person at this school who doesn’t know about this play. That means staple them to bulletin boards, hang them up on those weird clothes pin things outside the art room, tape them on every door and stairwell you can find. So yeah, I mean it when I say everywhere.”
“Alright then,” Sophie chimed in. “After that rousing speech, everyone pick a partner and we’ll arm you with a stapler, tape, clothespins, blu tack and more posters than you’ll know what to do with. Go!” Phil swore he saw PJ, Carrie, and Chris all share a look, but he brushed it off to partner up with Chris, only to find that he had already linked arms with Alexandra. He glanced around the room to see that PJ and Sophie were obviously in each other's pockets, Carrie was chatting with Matt, and Tom and Gi were leaned against one another playing some kind of app on Tom’s phone leaving-
“Uh, hi again?”
Phil whipped his head around to see Dan standing in front of him with a bit of red tinting his ears. “Your friend abandon you, too?” Phil chuckled. When Dan didn’t answer and just continued blinking at him, Phil flushed bright red immediately starting to back track. “Not that I’m saying- Well, what I mean is more that- You see what I’m trying to say is-” he finally sputtered to a stop. “Sorry?”
Dan blinked at him a couple more times before realization dawned on his face and he blushed to match Phil. “No, no it’s fine, I promise! I’m not offended or anything! Carrie did totally ditch me to partner with Matt. I was just really distracted by your glasses; I didn’t know you wore them.”
Phil chuckled nervously, scratching behind his neck. “Yeah, they’re- yeah. They’re kinda big and dumb looking so I try not to wear them at school too much.”
“It’s not that,” Dan mumbled, looking down and to the left while shooting Phil looks from beneath his lashes. “They actually really suit you. They make you look really smart I guess.” He flushed a bit darker before adding, “I like them.”
Well, if Phil wasn’t about to pass out before from how adorable and shy Dan looked he definitely was now. Dan liked his glasses. Dan Howell liked his glasses. He took a moment to gather himself before he could blurt out that he was about to call the optometrist and tell her to cancel all his contact orders from now until forever because Dan Howell liked his glasses. “Thanks, that means a lot,” he said instead. “I don’t really like them all that much so they can use all the love they can get from other people.”
Dan sputtered out an abrasive laugh which garnered a couple people’s attention and made Phil’s chest feel like it had been filled with warm helium before Dan slapped his hands over his mouth to muffle it. Phil considered telling Dan his hands would would better suited in Phil’s instead of quieting the music that was his laugh, but decided that was maybe a little forward. “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you wearing your glasses if you hate them so much?”
“Oh, sometimes my contacts can bother my eyes and last period they were really itchy and so I took them out instead of trying to rub my eyeballs into the back of my skull.”
Phil mentally slapped himself for actually saying that out loud, but Dan just giggled. “Well, I hope they’re feeling better. I noticed you had some red in your eyes, so I’m glad it’s nothing serious.”
At the mention of red Phil slammed his eyes shut and covered them with his hands. “PJ said the red was all gone!” he whined.
Dan immediately started flapping his hands nervously. “No, no it’s fine! It’s hardly noticeable at all! I only noticed because I was staring at your face up close, and oh my god, I can’t believe I said that out loud. Someone please stop me.” By the end of his sentence Dan was a darker red than Phil previously thought possible and looked  just about ready for the world to split in half and swallow him whole. He was adorable, and Phil was about to die.
“Nah, I get it,” Phil chuckled with a smile. “You said the glasses were distracting so it makes sense for you to stare.”
Dan opened his mouth like he was about to argue Phil’s point, but there was a cough behind Phil and they both turned to see PJ standing there with a stack of flyers in his hands and a knowing smirk on his lips. “Well, since the two of you were too busy - um, let’s say talking - to come up and pick an area to work in the only one left is the gym and lunchroom, so I hope the two of you brought umbrellas.” Dan looked absolutely panic stricken at the thought of needing an umbrella, much to Phil’s confusion, but PJ simply carried on. “Sophie has the stuff to hang these up with so you two need to get going or we’re still going to be here when school lets in tomorrow.”
Phil groaned melodramatically and accused PJ of forsaking him and throwing him to the depths of hell, but still smiled and thanked Sophie - who was giggling behind her hands - when he got their tools. The only problem was that Dan was strangely quiet the entire time, and not in the adorably shy way he was earlier that afternoon when they were walking to class together. No, this was more akin to the silence of a man being lead to the gallows, and that just wasn’t going to work in Phil’s book. “Hey, are you okay?”
Dan gnawed his bottom lip for a moment before sighing and saying, “I’m really not sure if I want to tell you. Like on one hand it’s really not that big of a deal, and avoiding it is only going to make it way worse, but on the other hand it’s really embarrassing, and I don’t like talking about it.”
Phil hummed in thought, tapping his chin and looking Dan up and down through squinted eyes. To most it might look like he was just observing the younger boy to come up with some sort of plan, but in reality he was just taking the opportunity to check him out. “What if I hum and then you say it really quickly and if I hear you, I can pretend I didn’t understand and if I didn’t hear you then you at least got it off your chest and you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Dan laughed and smiled so hard his eyes were almost completely closed. “You are such a strange person, Phil Lester,” he said with what Phil was adamantly interpreting as fondness.
“You know, you’re actually not the first person to tell me that.”
Dan rolled his eyes but he still had that grin so Phil didn’t take it to heart. “Unfortunately, that plan won’t work, so I’m just going to tell you, but you can’t make fun of me, okay?” Phil nodded eagerly, knowing that there was no way he could ever deliberately make Dan feel bad about himself. Dan took a deep breath and quickly said, “MyhairisnaturallyreallycurlysoIstraightenitbutwhenitgetswetitgetscurlyagainandit’srainingandIdidn’tbringanything.”
Phil blinked, trying to process what he just heard until it finally clicked and he beamed. “Why didn’t you say so?! You can borrow my coat.”
Dan’s eyes bugged out at the very idea. “I can’t just take your coat! What are you going to wear? It may be a short walk, but you’ll still wind up soaked by the time we get inside.”
Phil shrugged. “Well, any way you look at it, one of us is going to look like a drowned rat by the end of this no matter what. You seem to be a lot more worried about it than me, so why shouldn’t you be the one to stay dry? Besides, I have a change of clothes in my bag since I’m meeting up with my family for dinner after this. Take the coat, Dan.”
“But Phil-”
“Too late!” he sang, pulling his arm out of the sleeve. “I’m  taking it off and I’m not going to put it back on until it’s time to leave. If you don’t take it then the poor coat will just sit here and be useless while we both get wet. Do you want my coat to feel that way, Dan?”
Dan giggled at his overreaction, but took the coat with a gentle smile. “Thanks, Phil. I mean it.”
“No problem,” Phil smiled back. “But now you do have to hold the flyers and stuff. Just shove them under your jacket so they don’t get wet.”
Dan nodded and took the papers. “Alright then, let’s do this.”
                                                    Act I Scene V
“Oh my god, Louise, it was amazing,” Dan gushed over the phone. He had tried texting Louise but he was way too excited and his fingers kept slipping and pretty much everything he wrote had more exclamation points than actual letters. “How do we have so much in common and I never knew it?”
“Maybe because you only ever stalked him instead of talking and sharing your interests?” she teasingly suggested.
“You can’t tell but I’m giving you a dirty look right now,” Dan pouted, tracing his finger over the numbers written on the Post-It note Phil had given him. “And there will be plenty of actual talking between the two of us now, since he gave me his number.”
Louise squealed across the line. She had never made it a secret that Phil wasn’t her first choice for Dan’s big crush, but she had to admit that the fact that Dan was so over the moon for him was precious, and anything that made Dan happy made her happy. “Oh my god, really? What happened?”
“Well, we had to go out to the gym to hang posters and since it was pouring I was complaining about my hair-”
“Like you always do.”
“Shut it. Anyway, he insisted that I used his jacket to keep dry and at the end of the day it was still raining so he told me to keep it and I could text him about returning it later,” Dan sighed happily, reliving every moment of the afternoon in perfect clarity. “Louise, it was amazing. He’s amazing.”
“Have you texted him yet?” Louise demanded. “You have to tell me everything when you do.”
“I don’t want to return his jacket yet,” Dan admitted. He hadn’t told Louise that it was warm and smelled like Phil and that was why he didn’t want to lose it but he was pretty sure she knew. “What if I text him and all he wants to talk about is getting his coat?”
Louise sighed and Dan knew she was her rolling her eyes. “You’re being ridiculous, you know that, right? Of course he doesn’t want to just talk about that. Giving someone your coat as an excuse to keep talking to someone is one of the oldest tricks in the book. I’m pretty sure it’s been a thing since coats were invented.”
“I don’t know, Louise,” Dan said, biting his thumb nail. “I mean, Phil’s just a really nice person. He was probably just giving me his coat because it was nice. He’s not really the type to play tricks like that.”
“Everyone play tricks, even if it’s subconscious,” Louise dismissed. Dan could almost see her nodding sagely. “He probably did give you the jacket because you needed it, but the phone number was just so the two of you can talk. If he really was only interested in the coat then he would have just set up a time to get it back when he gave it to you.”
“You really think so?” Dan asked nervously. “What if I make a fool of myself and he never speaks to me again?”
“Number one that won’t happen. Number two, even if it does are you really in any worse of a boat? It’s not like you were actually talking to him before this anyway.”
“You’re being super unhelpful and also the absolute worst.”
“You love it. Now text that lion loving nerd and make sure I’m your maid of honor at the wedding.”
“What do I even say?” Dan whined.
“Just introduce yourself, you complete dollop head. Just say ‘Hi, this is Dan!’”
Dan sighed dramatically, flopping back and extending out three of his long limbs. He winced when they all settled into that nice stretched feeling and quickly changed phone hands so he could do that last one as well. “Fine, I’ll do it as soon as I get off the phone with you.”
“Oh, well, in that case my mother has been calling me to come downstairs for about five minutes and I’m definitely not making this up so you have to text Phil.”
“Louise I hate you!”
“Love you, too!” she cackled, sending a couple kissing noises across the line before hanging up.
Dan groaned and glared at his phone for abandoning him, hoping that Louise would somehow be able to feel it. After a moment he sighed and pulled up messages and tapped “Compose”
To: Phil 5:44
hello! this is dan the guy u left your coat with this afternoon lol.
Dan closed the app to open YouTube, not expecting a response any time soon, but before he could finish pulling up his subscription box his phone buzzed.
From: Phil 5:47
Hi!! How was your walk home? Did you stay dry and everything? I would have given you a ride, but I was already late to meet my parents. I’m sorry. :(
Dan took a moment to breathe calmly but quickly gave up in favor of squealing in delight as he rolled back and forth, clutching his phone to his chest. He just had to tell Louise.
To: The Mum Friend 5:49
omg hes so nice. like he asked if i stayed dry on the way home and apologized for not driving me home himself  #phillesterangelconfirmed
To: Phil the Actual Angel 5:51
dw about it ^-^ i stayed pretty dry. yhanks to you i don’t look like a hobbit reject.
From: Phil the Actual Angel 5:54
Lol any Hobbit that rejects you is missing out on making their Hobbit village cuter than all the other ones. You can come join my elf city and we can be too tall together.
To: The Mum Friend 5:57
LOUISSE HE CALLERD ME CUTER IM DYING SEND HELPP
To: Phil the Actual Angel 5:58
lets be honest wed both be loners. im too tall for the hobbits and ur too clumsy for the elves.
From: Phil the Actual Angel 6:00
Why must you crush my dreams Danyul? :’< I’m not that clumsy
To: Phil the Actual Angel 2:02
i think the paint still stuck in my hair from where u knocked me into the art supplies in the prop room would beg to differ.
From: Phil the Actual Angel 2:04
Okay, I GUESS that’s a fair point. And hey, as long as we’re outcasts together that’s not too bad in my book. ^-^
To: Phil the Actual Angel 2:04
my my phillip r u flirting with me?
From: Phil the Actual Angel 2:05
That depends entirely on if it’s working :D Hey, by the way, what lunch do you have?
Dan frowned at the sudden topic change, but shook his head and went along with it for now.
To: Phil the Actual Angel 6:06
i have 2nd y?
From: Phil the Actual Angel 2:07
You do? That’s the same one I have? How come I’ve never seen you? D:
To: Phil the Actual Angel 2:08
probs because i sit with my friends and we try to avoid human interaction lol
From: Phil the Actual Angel 2:10
Same, honestly. Do you think you and your friends would want to come and eat lunch with me and mine tomorrow? We usually sit out under the tree next to the front office.
To: Phil the Actual Angel 2:11
i am so sorry can i answer you in a sec my mum wants me
Dan took a deep breath, trying not to panic. He quickly dialed up Louise and waited with bated breath as it rang again and again and again and again and ag-
“Dan? What can-”
“HE ASKED ME TO EAT LUNCH WITH HIM TOMORROW!” Dan shouted before she could finish her greeting.
“Wait, hold on a minute. Who did what now?”
“Phil! He asked me to eat lunch with him tomorrow!” he repeated in a much quieter but no calmer tone. “Well, actually he asked me to ask all of you if you might be interested in eating lunch with his group tomorrow. What should I even say to that? ‘Yes, I’d like to eat lunch with you tomorrow and every following day for the rest of our lives’?”
“You could always just say you’ll ask,” she said with an underlying laugh. “I don’t see a problem with us sitting with them, though. All of us like meeting new people so it should be fun.”
“You mean it? Everything will be fine?”
“I’m sure of it, and if anyone says otherwise, I’ll wallop them on the head.”
“You’re the best, Louise.”
“I know it. Now go set up your lunch date already.” And with that the line clicked dead and Dan was once again left alone with his phone.
To: Phil the Actual Angel 5:14
sorry! my mum is v demanding sometimes T_T but yeah lunch tomorrow sounds great! all my friends like meeting new people so it should be lots of fun
From: Phil the Actual Angel 5:16
Don’t worry about it! ^-^ So you want to just meet at the tree or in the lunchroom or what?
To: Phil the Actual Angel 5:18
i think we can find our way to the tree so that should be fine ^-^ see u tomorrow!
From: Phil the Actual Angel 5:20
It’s a date!
Dan gaped at his phone for a moment before calling Louise yet again to scream.
17 notes · View notes
sgreffenius · 3 years
Text
Conspiracy theories
I had a teacher once who said that to define a word or a contested concept, determine what it is not. So it might be with a phrase we have heard and read about a lot lately: conspiracy theory. Even more popular is conspiracy theories, which lets you group numerous theories together, and treat them alike.
Let’s consider what conspiracy theories are not. They are not:
Rumors
Predictions
Lies
Fanciful stories
Fabrications
Impossibilities
Delusions
Alternately, conspiracy theories are often treated as, or they function as:
Accusations
Hypotheses
Speculation
Alternate accounts
Narratives
Authors of conspiracy theories, and people who do not dismiss them out of hand, tend to be skeptics. They distinguish plausible accounts from implausible ones. They feel comfortable with synonyms in the second list.
People who dismiss conspiracy theories also tend to be skeptics, but in the other direction. If something has a whiff of conspiracy about it, they stay away. They are quite conscious of what would happen to them if other people were to whisper conspiracy theorist behind their backs, or in public. They know because they have seen contemptuous ridicule heaped on others.
Where does that leave us with our definition then? We’ll consider parts of speech and other definitional matters in part two.
_____________________________
Aphorism for the day:
“Moral behavior is when you act in the other guy’s interest, not your own. If you expect the other guy to reciprocate, that’s delusion.”
_____________________________
Time for a bit of part two here.
Here’s the main message: get suspicious when people play fast and loose with parts of speech. For instance, if an immigrant family resides in the United States without proper authorization, nativists call them illegals. Illegal is an adjective. You can’t add an s to that word to make it a noun. Yet does it not sound degrading when you do? “You illegals, go back where you came from.” Contempt drips.
Another one that lives large is messaging. That’s where you add ing to message, the verb, to turn it into a noun. First of all, to say, “I want to message you, but I don’t have your cell,” sounds too hip by half. The old-fashioned,“I want to send you a message...” works better.
Message always works better as a noun than messaging. If you say something like, “The messaging is all wrong,” you immediately sound like you are up to something Orwellian, or at least devious in your use of words, and you probably are.
Now we come a two-word variant, which as Gollum would say, sounds tricksy. What advantage do you gain when you take two nouns, then make one an adjective for the other? After all, conspiracy is a noun. You cannot use it to describe what kind of theory you have in front of you, unless you press it into service for that purpose. Why would you want to do that?
As soon as you ask the question, the answer becomes obvious. How do you respond when someone says, “That’s just a conspiracy theory.”? Imagine if someone came to your garden and said dismissively, “That’s just a hay grass.”? All you can say is, “So what? What does that even mean?”
So the person who wants to put you down deigns to explain: “What you said is a theory about a conspiracy.” Ooohhh, got it. Still, why would you choose the word theory, if not to deliver a putdown? It seems explanation or hypothesis would be more accurate, if you want to talk about nefarious plans made by more than one person.
Let’s take a few examples of how conspiracy theories work in real life. All of them, in one way or another, involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I will develop these examples rapidly, with confidence that you know the back story, or can easily look it up.
In the early 1950s, the FBI charged Julius Rosenberg with espionage. They falsely charged his wife, Ethel, as a co-conspirator, in order to ‘persuade’ her to testify against her husband. When she refused, they electrocuted her at Sing Sing, on the same day they executed Julius. In this case, the FBI formulated a conspiracy theory based on false testimony against Ethel, and they stayed with it because they would not back off their threat.
Only ten years later, the FBI mounted a long, extensive investigation into the murder of President Kennedy. A lot of people at the time, including the president’s brother Bobby, believed that more than one person had a hand in Jack’s death. Yet the FBI insisted that one person - a ‘lone nut’ - had planned the murder and carried it out.
If the FBI had investigated John Wilkes Booth, they would have insisted he was a lone nut, too, if that’s the conclusion Andrew Johnson wanted. The Kennedy case, then, was the opposite of the Rosenberg case, in that it suited the FBI’s purposes to deny a conspiracy existed, despite a great deal of evidence to indicate the murder was not the work of one person.
Now we come to a comparison between two elections, and two so-called conspiracy theories. They are actually just accusations, dressed up as conspiracy theories. After the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton charged that Donald Trump became president with help from Russia. The FBI tried to lend support to this accusation, but it misplayed the situation just as badly as it misplayed both the Rosenberg case and the Kennedy assassination. Or you could simply say, “The truth will out.”
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump charged that various organizations and people across the country had stolen the election from him. He said officials used fraud to rig the vote in order to elect his opponent. He tried mightily to enlist his own Justice Department in the cause, but the FBI just hates him, deep down, so he would never find help in that quarter. He had to rely on Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell as his advocates, poor substitutes for the attorney general and the FBI director, to be sure.
Interestingly, Trump’s accusations have no more substance than Clinton’s, yet we observe how differently people treat the two candidates. To this day, Clinton believes Russia helped Trump steal the 2016 election, as do former intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper. You can even say Russia collusion is Clinton’s pet conspiracy theory, no evidence required.
Trump, by contrast, makes enemies by the bushel, and sinks well below Clinton on the likability scale, which tells you something. Then he encourages insurrection based on his “Stop the Steal” campaign. He and his supporters go way past conspiracy theories at this point. The mob that invaded the Capitol did not care how nameless conspirators might have rigged the vote: they just wanted their man to stay in office.
So people refer to QAnon conspiracy theories to discredit the mob, but the mob’s behavior speaks for itself. You do not need online conspiracy theories to explain why an angry mob would beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. Yet that is what we do. We seem to think that if we can suppress conspiracy theories, we can also suppress insurrections at the Capitol building, or anywhere else they might occur.
Beware the use of any phrase as an epithet. Some conspiracy theories are true, others are not. Far better to use vocabulary appropriate to the case. The FBI presses charges of conspiracy against Ethel Rosenberg to extort testimony against her husband. After Jack Ruby executes his victim in the basement of a Dallas county jail, the FBI concludes nearly a year later, “Justice was done. Oswald acted alone.” That is what Johnson, Hoover, Warren, Dulles, Ford, Specter, and dozens of investigators wanted Warren’s report to conclude.
We jump ahead fifty-five years to find that practically the whole Department of Justice goes along with Clinton’s charges of conspiracy, partly because the department cannot forget how Trump fired James Comey. They also seem to respect Clinton because her husband used to be president. Mueller nabbed numerous Trump cronies, but uncovered no evidence of collusion or other nefarious electoral behavior among the lot. Yet a lot of people still believe it was so.
Mainstream accounts say Trump’s accusations about a stolen election are delusional, the accuser mad. No one says that, or will say that about Clinton. The comparison does not suggest that Trump’s charges might be valid, or that he carefully weighs his words. It does suggest that when we analyze evidence and narratives that account for election outcomes, we do not need to discuss conspiracies, or theories. We just want to understand what happened.
So let’s drop the term conspiracy theory, and its plural cousin, conspiracy theories. Consider complicated stories case by case. We have a rich vocabulary to discuss crimes, evidence, motives, context, and multitudinous details that help us make sense of history. Let’s use it. The epithet conspiracy theory empties our brains, clouds our insight, and debases our thought.
0 notes
itsfinancethings · 4 years
Link
December 18, 2019 at 09:10PM
In the heat of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made sure he checked in with his Republican colleague and longtime friend, Florida lawmaker Francis Rooney. Democrats were rushing the investigation, McCarthy reminded Rooney, according to a source familiar with the exchange, and he wanted to make sure Rooney had access to the facts and knew he could come to him with any questions.
Rooney was one of many members McCarthy spoke with throughout the process, but it was a critical moment given the lawmaker’s concerns. Democrats were in the midst of leading closed-door depositions as part of their probe assessing if Trump had leveraged foreign assistance to Ukraine in exchange for a promise of an investigation into a political rival, and the information coming from the hearings was damaging. Rooney, who heard the testimonies as a member of one of the committees conducting the inquiry, had told reporters he was considering breaking with the party to vote for Trump’s impeachment. It was the furthest any Republican had publicly gone in acknowledging that President’s conduct was potentially impeachable.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer both met with Rooney on Tuesday to try and get him to vote with them, according to a GOP leadership aide. But in the end, Rooney voted against impeachment, and Republicans stayed unified — a major win for the party that followed a months-long campaign of briefings and email blasts by House leadership. “Never in the history of our country has a president been impeached on a party-line vote,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told TIME in an interview in his Capitol Hill office on the eve of the vote. “And that will happen tomorrow.”
The accomplishment is a blow to Democrats, who now face an election year with the risk that voters view impeachment as a partisan-motivated power play rather than an honest defense of the constitution. When Democrats formally launched the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, Republicans’ unity was hardly a given. No one knew what would emerge from the ensuing investigation. The road toward impeachment for both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, while divisive, had ultimately wielded bipartisan support, so much so in Nixon’s case that he chose to resign rather than face the circus in Congress. Republicans knew that their best weapon against the almost inevitable prospect of Trump becoming the third commander-in-chief in U.S. history to have an impeachment asterisk next to his name was party unity.
Rooney’s office declined to comment. But two days before Rooney spoke out, Scalise had held the first of what would become weekly impeachment briefings for members. Huddled in the basement of the Capitol, Republicans would hear from the lawmakers sitting in on the closed-door depositions, such as Reps. Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe and Lee Zeldin, who discounted the narrative emerging in testimony that Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had orchestrated a shadow foreign policy to push Ukraine to conduct politically beneficial investigations. Senators Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, two of Trump’s top defenders, also made appearances, according to a whip source.
“My objective has always been to get the facts to our members,” said Scalise. When the inquiry first began, he argued, Democrats were cherry picking information to spotlight from the closed-door hearings that were putting some Republicans in a bind because they couldn’t access the full testimony. “It raised all these questions,” he said.
The key point the lawmakers repeatedly hammered home at these briefings, Scalise said, was the witnesses’ lack of firsthand knowledge of the President’s intentions. “It’s one thing to say, well, I’ve heard a rumor that somebody did something bad. It’s another thing to then have talked to somebody who said, ‘Well no I never saw the person do that. It never happened,” he explained. “And so that was our objective.”
Both McCarthy and Scalise were in contact with members who had questions or concerns – like Rooney – throughout the process, sources said. Beginning on October 2nd, McCarthy’s office has circulated an e-mail every morning to Republican members of the House. The inaugural e-mail, obtained by TIME, was described as “daily guidance on the Democrats’ attempts to undo the 2016 election and impeach the President.” The days often closed with an e-mail from the office of Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, the third-highest Republican in the House, highlighting key quotes the party believed was essential to their story-line absolving the President, according to a leadership source. Scalise’s team circulated eight emails known as “whip tips” with statistics like the number of Democrats who supported impeachment before the Ukraine allegations surfaced.
The strategy clearly worked. These coordinated efforts succeeded in uniting the party in ways that even surprised its own members. Current and former Republican congressional aides marveled – and were also, they admitted, mystified – at how Rep. Elise Stefanik, hailed as one of the conference’s most bi-partisan members, stood side by side with Jordan, a founding member of the conservative Freedom Caucus and one of the lower chamber’s most notorious rabble rousers. McCarthy, never a natural ally of Jordan, placed him intermittently on the Intelligence Committee during the public hearings to maximize his effect as Trump’s top attack dog. “We’ve never been this united,” Rep. Mark Meadows, another founding member of the Freedom Caucus and a close Trump ally, boasted as he left his party’s weekly meeting Tuesday evening.
Rep. Peter King, a retiring lawmaker from New York who opposed the impeachment of both Trump and Clinton, credited this sense of unity to the universal disgust with what Republicans viewed as a rushed and biased process. House Republicans, King said, “have been sort of driven toward [Trump] by this, not because of his presidential leadership, but because they do feel that Democrats overplayed their hand, and this is not something that warrants impeachment.”
Democrats’ frustration is palpable. While the party leadership knew that the polarized environment made the prospect of a bipartisan impeachment highly improbable, they still had an inkling of hope that fresh evidence might compel some Republicans to break with their party. But few Republicans in the House would even admit what some Democrats did when defending Clinton against impeachment: that the President’s conduct was wrong, but not impeachable. The number of lawmakers who have criticized either Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president or the evidence that has come up in the subsequent congressional investigation has been limited to the most moderate members of the caucus, like Rooney and Reps. Fred Upton and Brian Fitzpatrick. “The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, displaying the rare emotion, semi-thundered from the dais at the close of his committee’s last public impeachment hearing. “Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?”
Republicans outside of Congress say the difference this time lies in Trump, his passionate base and the consequences of defiance. “Many House members are very unhappy with the President’s misbehavior and misconduct in office,” said one former Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If there was a secret ballot vote, there would be a hell of a lot of Republicans voting for impeachment.” William Cohen, a former Republican lawmaker and Secretary of Defense under Clinton who broke with his party to support articles of impeachment during Watergate, said the fear of these consequences just reflects how the Republican party’s been redrawn in the President’s image. “It’s not the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s the party of Trump.”
0 notes
newstechreviews · 4 years
Link
In the heat of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made sure he checked in with his Republican colleague and longtime friend, Florida lawmaker Francis Rooney. Democrats were rushing the investigation, McCarthy reminded Rooney, according to a source familiar with the exchange, and he wanted to make sure Rooney had access to the facts and knew he could come to him with any questions.
Rooney was one of many members McCarthy spoke with throughout the process, but it was a critical moment given the lawmaker’s concerns. Democrats were in the midst of leading closed-door depositions as part of their probe assessing if Trump had leveraged foreign assistance to Ukraine in exchange for a promise of an investigation into a political rival, and the information coming from the hearings was damaging. Rooney, who heard the testimonies as a member of one of the committees conducting the inquiry, had told reporters he was considering breaking with the party to vote for Trump’s impeachment. It was the furthest any Republican had publicly gone in acknowledging that President’s conduct was potentially impeachable.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer both met with Rooney on Tuesday to try and get him to vote with them, according to a GOP leadership aide. But in the end, Rooney voted against impeachment, and Republicans stayed unified — a major win for the party that followed a months-long campaign of briefings and email blasts by House leadership. “Never in the history of our country has a president been impeached on a party-line vote,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told TIME in an interview in his Capitol Hill office on the eve of the vote. “And that will happen tomorrow.”
The accomplishment is a blow to Democrats, who now face an election year with the risk that voters view impeachment as a partisan-motivated power play rather than an honest defense of the constitution. When Democrats formally launched the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, Republicans’ unity was hardly a given. No one knew what would emerge from the ensuing investigation. The road toward impeachment for both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, while divisive, had ultimately wielded bipartisan support, so much so in Nixon’s case that he chose to resign rather than face the circus in Congress. Republicans knew that their best weapon against the almost inevitable prospect of Trump becoming the third commander-in-chief in U.S. history to have an impeachment asterisk next to his name was party unity.
Rooney’s office declined to comment. But two days before Rooney spoke out, Scalise had held the first of what would become weekly impeachment briefings for members. Huddled in the basement of the Capitol, Republicans would hear from the lawmakers sitting in on the closed-door depositions, such as Reps. Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe and Lee Zeldin, who discounted the narrative emerging in testimony that Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had orchestrated a shadow foreign policy to push Ukraine to conduct politically beneficial investigations. Senators Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, two of Trump’s top defenders, also made appearances, according to a whip source.
“My objective has always been to get the facts to our members,” said Scalise. When the inquiry first began, he argued, Democrats were cherry picking information to spotlight from the closed-door hearings that were putting some Republicans in a bind because they couldn’t access the full testimony. “It raised all these questions,” he said.
The key point the lawmakers repeatedly hammered home at these briefings, Scalise said, was the witnesses’ lack of firsthand knowledge of the President’s intentions. “It’s one thing to say, well, I’ve heard a rumor that somebody did something bad. It’s another thing to then have talked to somebody who said, ‘Well no I never saw the person do that. It never happened,” he explained. “And so that was our objective.”
Both McCarthy and Scalise were in contact with members who had questions or concerns – like Rooney – throughout the process, sources said. Beginning on October 2nd, McCarthy’s office has circulated an e-mail every morning to Republican members of the House. The inaugural e-mail, obtained by TIME, was described as “daily guidance on the Democrats’ attempts to undo the 2016 election and impeach the President.” The days often closed with an e-mail from the office of Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, the third-highest Republican in the House, highlighting key quotes the party believed was essential to their story-line absolving the President, according to a leadership source. Scalise’s team circulated eight emails known as “whip tips” with statistics like the number of Democrats who supported impeachment before the Ukraine allegations surfaced.
The strategy clearly worked. These coordinated efforts succeeded in uniting the party in ways that even surprised its own members. Current and former Republican congressional aides marveled – and were also, they admitted, mystified – at how Rep. Elise Stefanik, hailed as one of the conference’s most bi-partisan members, stood side by side with Jordan, a founding member of the conservative Freedom Caucus and one of the lower chamber’s most notorious rabble rousers. McCarthy, never a natural ally of Jordan, placed him intermittently on the Intelligence Committee during the public hearings to maximize his effect as Trump’s top attack dog. “We’ve never been this united,” Rep. Mark Meadows, another founding member of the Freedom Caucus and a close Trump ally, boasted as he left his party’s weekly meeting Tuesday evening.
Rep. Peter King, a retiring lawmaker from New York who opposed the impeachment of both Trump and Clinton, credited this sense of unity to the universal disgust with what Republicans viewed as a rushed and biased process. House Republicans, King said, “have been sort of driven toward [Trump] by this, not because of his presidential leadership, but because they do feel that Democrats overplayed their hand, and this is not something that warrants impeachment.”
Democrats’ frustration is palpable. While the party leadership knew that the polarized environment made the prospect of a bipartisan impeachment highly improbable, they still had an inkling of hope that fresh evidence might compel some Republicans to break with their party. But few Republicans in the House would even admit what some Democrats did when defending Clinton against impeachment: that the President’s conduct was wrong, but not impeachable. The number of lawmakers who have criticized either Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president or the evidence that has come up in the subsequent congressional investigation has been limited to the most moderate members of the caucus, like Rooney and Reps. Fred Upton and Brian Fitzpatrick. “The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, displaying the rare emotion, semi-thundered from the dais at the close of his committee’s last public impeachment hearing. “Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?”
Republicans outside of Congress say the difference this time lies in Trump, his passionate base and the consequences of defiance. “Many House members are very unhappy with the President’s misbehavior and misconduct in office,” said one former Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If there was a secret ballot vote, there would be a hell of a lot of Republicans voting for impeachment.” William Cohen, a former Republican lawmaker and Secretary of Defense under Clinton who broke with his party to support articles of impeachment during Watergate, said the fear of these consequences just reflects how the Republican party’s been redrawn in the President’s image. “It’s not the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s the party of Trump.”
0 notes
Text
What happens next? Pols talk Crowley’s loss
https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=5347
What happens next? Pols talk Crowley’s loss
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 15-point victory over Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) in last week’s Democratic primary has been described as one of the more monumental upsets in American political history.
But according to Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside), the defeat of the powerful Queens Democratic Party chairman wasn’t surprising at all.
In fact, there were numerous signs in the congressional district — which overlaps with Van Bramer’s — that an Ocasio-Cortez win was not just possible, but likely.
“For me, on the ground, I was watching and feeling that momentum build. There was no question that it was building steam every day,” Van Bramer told the Chronicle. “You could see more and more Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez people as the days went by on the corner, at the green market and knocking on doors.”
Councilman Bob Holden (D-Middle Village), whose district also partially overlaps with Crowley’s, said he got a sense that she could very well win in the race’s waning weeks, as well.
“Her videos are very well done and her message is clear. She’s articulate. This woman goes right to it,” Holden said. “I thought she would give him a run for his money. I know some people in the district who said she rang their doorbells twice but they never saw Joe Crowley.”
The House Democratic Caucus chairman’s loss marks the third time a county party-backed incumbent closely tied to the leadership has lost to an insurgent political novice in the last 20 months. In 2016, it was then-Assemblywoman Marge Markey — Crowley’s successor in the 30th Assembly District.
Her little-known, 30-year-old challenger, now-Assemblyman Brian Barnwell (D-Maspeth), spent his campaign casting Markey as out of touch with the district and pledging to be that young leader with new ideas that constituents were clammoring for. Barnwell ended up winning his primary in a landslide.
One year later, it was former Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, Joe Crowley’s cousin, who was defeated — the bomb-throwing Holden won by a mere 137 votes.
Like Barnwell, Holden repeatedly blasted the incumbent as being both tied too closely to what he called Mayor de Blasio’s corrupt administration and not being in tune with the needs of her constituents.
Last week, it was Joe Crowley himself who lost to a 28-year-old democratic socialist who spent the better part of a year saying the lawmaker was more interested in serving his corporate donors than his district.
The record has been mixed for county-backed candidates in years prior as well, as Van Bramer, Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights), Assemblywoman Nily Rozic (D-Fresh Meadows) and a handful of others defeated candidates backed by the Queens Democratic Party.
On Election Night 2017, Holden told the Chronicle that his win should be a wakeup call for Crowley — whose office declined to comment when contacted by the paper.
“Joe Crowley, the handwriting is on the wall,” he said. “You should recognize that you work for the people, not the other way around.”
Asked about his seemingly prophetic words, Holden — who has had a rocky relationship with Crowley — said last week that the lawmaker had told him in past years that the powerful “machine” that is the Queens Democratic Party isn’t as influential as many think.
“He told me that when we were close. When I would bring up the aspect of the machine, he would laugh at that,” Holden said. “It’s not a coincidence that Markey, Elizabeth and he are now out.
“It says something about his leadership. When you’re in there too long, you get complacent. you get arrogant,” he added. “He would dictate from the top of the mountain and he got too carried away with that.”
Choosing his words carefully, Van Bramer said there have been plenty of signs in recent years that the party’s strength has been greatly overstated.
“So few races are contested, but when they were contested, insurgents started winning regularly,” he said. “Maybe [the county party] perceived its strength as greater than it was.”
Asked why Crowley lost, both Van Bramer and Holden both gave credit to Ocasio-Cortez for running an inspired campaign based on ideas and placed blame on the incumbent for potentially not taking the race seriously until it was too late.
Assemblyman Michael Den Dekker (D-East Elmhurst), however, said it had nothing to do with any possible weakness in the county party.
Instead, he said it had almost everything to do with a paltry 13 percent turnout, disgust over the Trump administration and progressives nationwide specifically “targeting” Crowley — whom some liberals see as too corporatist to lead the party — in an effort to help move Washington more to the left.
“I think there was a lot of outside people that wanted to push this,” Den Dekker said. “I believe this particular seat was targeted to make a statement.”
Asked to back up his remark, the assemblyman pointed to the amount of out-of-state donations Ocasio-Cortez received — 88 percent of her contributions over $200 that were itemized with donor information came from outside the district.
He also claimed that the majority of her volunteers did not live in the district and that they had no place telling area residents whom to vote for.
“Joe would have made change nationally as a young progressive speaker,” he said, referring to rumors that Crowley may have become speaker of the House if the Democrats took back the chamber in the fall. “Some would say why would people from other states be so interested in stopping that from happening?”
Despite his critical comments about Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and others about his doubts that she will find allies in Congress, Den Dekker said he will do everything he can to ensure that she beats Republican Anthony Pappas in November.
“That’s a great thing Ocasio-Cortez did, reaching out to people who may have never gotten involved in the past,” he said. “I don’t believe that Joe Crowley was the enemy here, but change is good sometimes. I think she’ll make an excellent congresswoman.”
Crowley is expected to run for another two-year term as party chairman in late September — voted on by the borough’s Democratic district leaders.
Both Den Dekker and Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) told the Chronicle that they fully expect him to win and remain as chairman, even if his influence over the party wanes in the wake of his congressional defeat.
“Absolutely, I would put money on it,” Koslowitz said. “I am sure that Joe Crowley will continue as party chairman. He definitely has my vote.”
“We have a winning record more than a losing record and we have the strongest Democratic organization around,” Den Dekker added. “I wish the rest of the city would be as progressive as we are.”
State Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) said he wouldn’t be surprised if Crowley remained as party chairman, but that he’s heard rumors of people eyeing the top job.
“We’ll see. I’m sure vultures are circling. I’ve got to think this race causes a ripple effect,” Addabbo said. “But he’s not the congressman now. This is what people wanted, they didn’t want the county leader to be an elected official. Now he’s not.”
Borough President Melinda Katz agreed, saying Crowley has done so much good for the party that he’s earned the right to remain, regardless of his future in Congress.
“There’s no reason from my perspective for things to change,” Katz said, “unless he wants it to.”
Prefacing his comments by saying he’s the “last person who should speak for the party,” Holden said that Crowley’s crushing loss at the hands of Ocasio-Cortez underscores why new leadership is needed.
“I wouldn’t think that Joe Crowley should remain as the chairman,” he said. “I don’t think he understands the neighborhoods in Queens anymore. But that’s his decision.”
Van Bramer didn’t give a firm answer one way or the other, but he urged Democratic district leaders to consider the fact that the residents of Crowley’s district chose a new leader.
After all, Ocasio-Cortez’s 15-point win, the councilman said, says the voters want to be at the forefront of the Queens Democratic Party’s decisions, not a single, powerful figurehead.
“I absolutely think that democracy is better when people are at the center of the Democratic Party. It is not a top-down machine-driven system,” he said. “Voters are the heart and soul of the party. Voters are who we should listen to. We reject voters at our own peril.”
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3 PM TODAY: TRUMP announces Paris accord decision — INSIDE Trump’s climate struggle — THE DAWSEY DOWNLOAD: Understanding the WH — 2020 WATCH: Biden launches PAC — OBAMAS buy Kalorama house from Lockharts
Listen to the Playbook Audio Briefing http://bit.ly/2shba6G … Subscribe on iTunes http://apple.co/2eX6Eay … Visit the online home of Playbook http://politi.co/2f51Jnf
THAT SETTLES IT! — AP at 5:54 a.m.: “ST.PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) – Putin denies Russian state involvement in hacking, says hackers can’t affect elections results abroad.”
Story Continued Below
Good Thursday morning and happy first day of June. THE PARIS ANNOUNCEMENT — 3 P.M. TODAY — THE BACKDROP — President Donald Trump — joined by Vice President Mike Pence — will announce whether the United States will drop out of the Paris climate agreement, joining Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which wanted the agreement to go further in punishing nations that don’t comply. Inside the White House, there is near uniform agreement Trump will pull out, but some senior aides still think Trump will try to squeeze out a “better deal” by only partially ditching the climate accord.
ANDREW RESTUCCIA and JOSH DAWSEY — “Inside the struggle to sway Trump on Paris: Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt have spent months building pressure on the president to exit the climate deal — and trying to outmaneuver Ivanka Trump”: “Donald Trump’s chief strategist and EPA administrator maneuvered for months to get the president to exit the Paris climate accord, shrewdly playing to his populist instincts and publicly pressing the narrative that the nearly 200-nation deal was effectively dead — boxing in the president on one of his highest-profile decisions to date.
“Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt have sought to outsmart the administration’s pro-Paris group of advisers, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who were hoping the president could be swayed by a global swell of support for the deal from major corporations, U.S. allies, Al Gore and even the pope. But some of that pro-Paris sentiment wound up being surprisingly tepid, according to White House aides who had expected that European leaders would make a stronger case during Trump’s trip abroad earlier this month. …
“Some White House aides held out the prospect that the president still might take the middle course that Ivanka Trump and others had advocated — staying in the deal while drastically scaling back the Obama administration’s non-binding carbon cleanup promises. But three White House officials said Wednesday that they expect Trump to make a clean break by withdrawing from the agreement, though they noted it’s possible the president changes his mind at the last minute.” http://politi.co/2rsvPXM
**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh
THE NITTY GRITTY ON HOW TRUMP CAN WITHDRAW, from Dawsey and Restuccia: “If he withdraws, how will Trump do it? He could abide by the formal procedures in the underlying text of the agreement, which mandate that a formal withdrawal will not go into effect until at least Nov. 4, 2020. Or he could pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the underlying 1992 treaty that governs the negotiations, which would allow for a speedier pullout — a far more radical step that would see the U.S. abstain from the entire climate negotiating process. He could also declare that the agreement is a treaty, which would require a two-thirds-majority ratification vote in the Senate that would certainly fail.”
GOOD DETAIL, from NYT’s Mike Shear and Coral Davenport: “At home, he faced urgent pleas from corporate leaders, including Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, who told Mr. Trump on Tuesday that pulling out was wrong for business, the economy and the environment. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, threatened to resign from two White House advisory boards if the president withdrew from the Paris agreement.” http://nyti.ms/2shnrbA
–“All the ways Trump is shredding Obama’s climate agenda” – Politico http://politi.co/2qDy5MD
— BOSTON GLOBE: “Boston scraps summit on climate with China”: “The State Department-sponsored summit in Boston, revealed last June by then-secretary of state John F. Kerry, would have brought thousands of urban and business leaders to Boston from cities across the United States and China. It would have been the third such conference.” http://bit.ly/2sgZTU2
ONLY IN PLAYBOOK: UNDERSTANDING TRUMP — THE DAWSEY DOWNLOAD: “Senior administration officials told a dozen news outlets President Trump would withdraw from the Paris Accord, leaving few people completely sure he would do so. It is one of many hall-of-mirrors, sometimes head-spinning aspects of Trump’s White House. Administration officials and advisers fan flames of firing officials like Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, and even speculate on replacements, while the current aide works. As one Spicer ally recently said: ‘How many times have people said he was going to be fired? He is still at the podium.’
“Administration officials leak to the media hoping it will eventually become true and that coverage will sway Trump. White House officials sometimes don’t trust one another and spread rumors. They call other aides and advisers to see what he is saying about them. And officials are contradicted by other officials — and even Trump, who tests different strategies aloud to different people. He sometimes agrees with whoever is in the room with him. He likes to please and can dial dozens of friends in a weekend.
“So while Trump told people he was pulling out of the accord, and officials began moves to make it so, no one was exactly sure if he would change his mind before 3 p.m., when he promised a Rose Garden announcement. As one adviser he frequently speaks to said of a different issue last week: ‘I heard that two days ago. That might not be true anymore.’ Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager, reminded people on the trail: The only person who speaks for Trump is Trump. It just depends who he is speaking to — and when he is speaking.”
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THE STORY DRIVING NEXT WEEK — “Comey Expected to Testify Before Senate, if He Isn’t Blocked,” by NYT’s Matt Apuzzo and Mike Schmidt: “Senators expect the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to testify next week about his conversations with President Trump, congressional officials said on Wednesday, setting up a test of the White House’s willingness to cooperate with investigations into Mr. Trump’s associates.
“Putting the highly anticipated hearing on the calendar would force Mr. Trump to decide whether to invoke executive privilege and try to prevent Mr. Comey from testifying. Mr. Comey is expected to be asked about several conversations he had with the president, including one in which he says Mr. Trump encouraged him to stop investigating his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.” http://nyti.ms/2qDSUHM
THE LATEST ON RUSSIA — “House Russia investigators subpoena Flynn, Cohen,” by Austin Wright: “The House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday approved subpoenas for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election. The panel is also issuing subpoenas to businesses owned by the two men. The subpoenas to Flynn and Cohen were part of seven total subpoenas issued by the House committee on Wednesday, according to a congressional source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Four of the subpoenas were related to the Russia probe, and three others were related to the issue of ‘unmasking’ — the process used by intelligence officials to learn the identities of people inside the United States who are referenced in intelligence reports.” http://politi.co/2rX1QYt
WELCOME BACK — “Trump administration moves to return Russian compounds in Maryland and New York,” by WaPo’s Karen DeYoung and Adam Entous: “The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. … Early last month, the Trump administration told the Russians that it would consider turning the properties back over to them if Moscow would lift its freeze, imposed in 2014 in retaliation for U.S. sanctions related to Ukraine, on construction of a new U.S. consulate on a certain parcel of land in St. Petersburg. Two days later, the U.S. position changed. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a meeting in Washington that the United States had dropped any linkage between the compounds and the consulate, according to several people with knowledge of the exchanges.” http://wapo.st/2qIWT0R
—“Russia escalates spy games after years of U.S. neglect,” by Ali Watkins: “In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be tracked by the State Department, were going missing. The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA. One was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official, another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert.
“Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber optics cables tend to run. According to another U.S. intelligence official, ‘they find these guys driving around in circles in Kansas. It’s a pretty aggressive effort.’ It’s a trend that has led intelligence officials to conclude the Kremlin is waging a quiet effort to map the United States’ telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity to disrupt it.” http://politi.co/2qDSyNh
COMING ATTRACTIONS — “Benghazi investigators set for rematch on Trump-Russia scandal,” by Kyle Cheney and Austin Wright: “The last time Trey Gowdy and Elijah Cummings oversaw a politically explosive investigation, the two congressmen ripped into each other on national TV, as a grimacing Hillary Clinton looked on. With Washington in the grip of a new scandal over President Donald Trump and his team’s possible ties to Russia, Gowdy and Cummings appear set for a reunion that would test a deeply divided Congress’ ability to hold the White House to account. …
“The Gowdy-Cummings relationship, forged over two years as the leaders of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, is as complicated as it will be critical. It’s often harder for the executive branch to ignore bipartisan requests, which was a difficult hurdle during the Benghazi probe. The two men have squabbled publicly, but when the cameras are off, both profess respect for each other and an ability to work together, however haltingly.” http://politi.co/2qJk2jD
KEN VOGEL: “We were used, abused and exploited”: “As he built support for his signature political issue, Donald Trump formed a powerful partnership with a non-profit group dedicated to families of those killed by undocumented immigrants, but now some of those families are alleging they were exploited by both the non-profit group and President Trump. More than a dozen families involved in the Houston-based Remembrance Project — including two who spoke at the Republican National Convention and several more who spoke at Trump’s rallies or were featured in his campaign ads — have parted ways with the organization, according to people familiar with the situation, including six of the families.” http://politi.co/2rHsXr0
PAGE SIX: “CBS scrambling to find Scott Pelley replacement”: “CBS insiders say Norah O’Donnell has the gravitas for the job, but news chiefs are reluctant to take her out of ‘CBS This Morning,’ which she hosts alongside Charlie Rose and Gayle King, because the show is doing so well it could soon overtake NBC’s ‘Today’ in overall ratings.
“One insider said, ‘Norah would be willing to do both the evening and the morning if CBS wanted her to do so, but it would be a lot of work.’ CBS News chiefs had been in talks with Willie Geist last year, but insiders said he wanted too much money to leave NBC. Other TV insiders say CNN’s Jake Tapper could have been up for the role as he ‘had been making it clear that he’s ready for something bigger.’ But Tapper, as well as Anderson Cooper, who’s reported for ‘60 Minutes,’ have long-term contracts with CNN. Plus, CBS News doesn’t need to get the new evening anchor into the chair until September for the fall-ratings push.” http://pge.sx/2qJ17W7
THE JUICE …
–JOE AND MIKA will serve as visiting fellows this summer and fall at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. They’ll do a D.C. event with IOP students and alums in the “Summer in Washington” program and will go up to Cambridge in the fall to do more campus events with students. http://bit.ly/2reEdcP
— WAPO SCOOP: The Obamas paid $8.1 million to buy the Kalorama home they’ve been renting from Joe and Giovanna Lockhart. Lockhart purchased the house for $5.295 million in 2014. http://wapo.st/2refFRg
— EVERETT EISSENSTAT, the Senate Finance Committee’s top Republican trade counsel, is expected to join the National Economic Council as deputy director, Adam Behsudi, Andrew Restuccia and Ben White report. http://politi.co/2rsGcLc
— PETER J. BOYER to the Weekly Standard: “Morning Media has learned that he’ll be a national correspondent at the 22-year-old conservative publication, as part of what EIC Stephen Hayes is calling a ‘big staff expansion.’ Boyer is an illustrious magazine veteran who has done tours at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Newsweek. But his most recent job, as an editor at large for Fox News, included a brush with controversy, as it was revealed that Boyer was present for a series of ‘war room’ meetings in which Roger Ailes plotted a smear campaign against biographer Gabriel Sherman.”
— DAVID SUTPHEN is leaving the Brunswick Group after nearly nine years at the firm. He is joining 2U, which partners with colleges and universities to work on digital education, as chief communications and engagement officer. George Little will replace Sutphen as head of the Brunswick Group’s D.C. office. Little joined the firm in 2015 as a partner. He previously was a Pentagon press secretary and director of public affairs and spokesman for the CIA.
THE MOMENT — per California Playbook: Recode’s Kara Swisher to Sen. Kamala Harris on stage Tuesday night at the #codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verdes: “Are you planning on running for President in 2020?” Harris: “I’m not giving that any considering. I’ve got to stay focused.” Swisher: “That’s a yes.” http://bit.ly/2qEeWWK
PHOTO DU JOUR: A member of the Secret Service looks out on the North Lawn from a balcony of the White House on May 31. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
CLICKER – Mary Meeker’s annual report — “Internet Trends 2017 — Code Conference” http://bit.ly/1dB4Zm9
LETHAL DUO — ADAM NAGOURNEY and JONATHAN MARTIN in Vista, California: “Democrats’ Bid to Regain Hold on House Begins in California”: “If Democrats have any chance of capturing the 24 Republican seats they need to take back control of the House, the road to victory starts here in California, and particularly in Orange County, a former conservative bastion that favored Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was the first time the county had voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.
“All 14 members of the California Republican congressional delegation voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including seven who, like Mr. Issa, represent districts that voted for Mrs. Clinton. Four of those come from districts that include Orange County. With its changing demographics and its declining Republican Party, California has increasingly loomed as the center of any national battle for House control. The Trump fervor this year offers an opportunity for Democrats to make the sort of congressional district gains that have eluded them even as they have come to dominate state politics over the last decade.
“At least for one election, it seems, there will be a role reversal: The state that has long served mostly as just an A.T.M. for candidates from across the nation will be on the receiving end of campaign cash. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an early show of force, is opening an office in Irvine. The committee’s western director, Kyle Layman, is already on the scene, working at a cafe table outside a Whole Foods Market in Tustin until a lease is signed.” http://nyti.ms/2sqW2mO
THE ECONOMIST WEIGHS IN ON U.K. ELECTIONS — “Backing the open, free-market centre is not just directed towards this election. We know that this year the Lib Dems are going nowhere. But the whirlwind unleashed by Brexit is unpredictable. Labour has been on the brink of breaking up since [Jeremy] Corbyn took over. If [Theresa] May polls badly or messes up Brexit, the Tories may split, too. Many moderate Conservative and Labour MPs could join a new liberal centre party—just as parts of the left and right have recently in France. So consider a vote for the Lib Dems as a down-payment for the future. Our hope is that they become one element of a party of the radical centre, essential for a thriving, prosperous Britain.” http://econ.st/2rHxOYU
2020 WATCH — “Trump to hold reelection fundraiser in June,” by Alex Isenstadt: “President Donald Trump continues to prepare for his next election – in 2020. Trump is slated to headline a Washington, D.C. fundraising dinner on June 28 that will benefit Trump Victory, a joint fundraising agreement between Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. Funds raised at the event will be split between the two accounts.” http://politi.co/2rncyoh
— “Biden launches PAC, keeping options open,” by Isaac Dovere: Former Vice President Joe Biden will launch a new PAC on Thursday, American Possibilities, giving him a way of supporting candidates and keeping his own options open for a potential 2020 presidential run. Officially, the group will be ‘dedicated to electing people who believe that this country is about dreaming big, and supporting groups and causes that embody that spirit,’ according to the PAC’s launch materials. Biden has hired Greg Schultz, his political director during his second term as vice president, as the executive director of the PAC.” http://politi.co/2qDwana
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THE FAMILY — “How Jared Kushner built a luxury skyscraper using loans meant for job-starved areas,” by WaPo’s Shawn Boburg: “Jared Kushner and his real estate partners wanted to take advantage of a federal program in 2015 that would save them millions of dollars as they built an opulent, 50-story residential tower in this city’s booming waterfront district, just across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. There was just one problem: The program was designed to benefit projects in poor, job-starved areas. So the project’s consultants got creative, records show.
“They worked with state officials in New Jersey to come up with a map that defined the area around 65 Bay Street as a swath of land that stretched nearly four miles and included some of the city’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods. At the same time, they excluded some wealthy neighborhoods only blocks away. The tactic — critics liken it to the gerrymandering of legislative districts — made it appear that the luxury tower was in an area with extraordinarily high unemployment, allowing Kushner Companies and its partners to get $50 million in low-cost financing through the EB-5 visa program.” http://wapo.st/2sqUvNx
— “Trump administration approves tougher visa vetting, including social media checks,” by Reuters’ Yeganeh Torbati: “Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States. Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.” http://reut.rs/2rsrX94
TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE — “Trump White House grants waivers of ethics rules,” by Josh Gerstein: “President Donald Trump’s executive order on ethics has been waived at least 11 times since the administration came into office in January, according to records the White House posted online Wednesday night. The waivers allow White House staffers to work on matters that could affect their former employers or clients or involve issues from which the aides would be normally be excluded because of past lobbying work. The waivers allow White House staffers to work on matters that could affect their former employers or clients or involve issues from which the aides would be normally be excluded because of past lobbying work.” http://politi.co/2rHz1zL
— WHO GOT THE WAIVERS: Kellyanne Conway to work with former clients, Stephen Bannon to engage with Breitbart, energy lobbyist Michael Catanzaro to work on “energy and environmental policy issues,” and tax policy adviser Shahira Knight, formerly of Fidelity, to work on tax issues. Andrew Olmem, a White House economic aide, to work on finance issues although he previously lobbied for the industries, Mike Pence’s chief of staff Josh Pitcock to work on issues related to Indiana and six lawyers from Jones Day, “including [Don] McGahn, were granted approval to take part in meetings with their former Jones Day colleagues relating to the firm’s ongoing legal representation of Trump, his campaign and related entities.”
— POLITICO EUROPE has launched a U.K. Election Tracker. Available for iPhones http://politi.co/2sl4gN1
MEDIAWATCH – SiriusXM later this week is launching two new weekend shows, as it continues to brand itself as “The Voice of the Resistance” to the Trump administration. “Signal Boost” is hosted by former Clinton campaign staffers Zerlina Maxwell and Jess McIntosh and will premiere on Saturday at 10 a.m. ET, while “#WokeAF” launches Sunday at 10 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Progress channel 127.
SPOTTED: Janet Yellen on yesterday’s 1:25 pm United flight from Washington to Chicago with four security guards … Kurt Bardella as a background actor as a “Reporter” in a few episodes of this new season of “House of Cards” — pics http://bit.ly/2rnCnoc
HAPPENING TODAY: Former HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell starts her first day as American University’s first female president. Burwell’s scheduled to meet with faculty, staff and students as part of a listening tour.
WASHINGTON INC. – Targeted Victory is forming a new partnership with Chris Wilson’s polling and intelligence firm WPAi. http://politi.co/2shekY8
TRANSITIONS — Christine Wormuth will be the Atlantic Council’s first director of its new Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience. She was formerly under secretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Mary Beth Gombita, director of media relations at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Stephen Gombita, an associate at DLA Piper, recently welcomed Palmer Stephen Gombita. Pic http://politi.co/2rnDDrz
— Alicia D’Angelo, account manager for audience solutions at POLITICO, and Charles D’Angelo, president at Westmount Capital Group welcomed their daughter into the world on Tuesday at 11:30 p.m. “Arabella Charlotte D’Angelo arrived almost 2 weeks after her due date, and while mom and dad are thrilled she is finally with them, everyone on the Audience Solutions team is slightly disappointed that no one won the due date betting pool.” Pics http://politi.co/2qEmsoo … http://politi.co/2sh5oSV
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Alex Seitz-Wald, political reporter for NBC News and MSNBC. How he’s celebrating: “My wife and I went to a bed and breakfast on the water in the Eastern Shore of Maryland over the Memorial Day weekend, which was also our first anniversary! I’ll also get together with some friends at a bar in D.C. on my actual birthday.” Read his Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2rsLnuC
BIRTHDAYS: Sam Smith — her parents are coming into town to take her to dinner at Le Diplomate (hat tips: Bubba and Charlie the dog) … Alex Allbritton is 10 … Dan Bartlett … Alex Stoddard (h/t Geoff Morrell) … Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) is 61 … Spencer Ackerman, national security reporter at the Daily Beast and a Guardian and Wired alum, is 37 … Washington’s favorite winemaker Alex Gambal … Jenny Cizner of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs … Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies … Leslie Harris (h/ts Jon Haber) … Constance Boozer, research assistant for Senate Majority Leader Leader Schumer … Elizabeth Glidden … former Rep. Mark Green (R-Wisc.) is 57 … Axios news desk reporter Shane Savitsky (h/t Bubba) … Irena Vidulovic … Elizabeth Rojas Levi … Forest Harger … Cruz-world’s Jason Johnson … Greg Nelson … Nairi Hourdajian, VP of marketing and comms at Canaan Partners and an Uber and GPG alum … Ronnie Dunn, one half of the legendary duo Brooks & Dunn (h/t Kurt Bardella) …
… Erin Shields Britt, director of corporate comms. at CVS Health … GOP ad man and Pittsburgh native Jim Innocenzi … Mark Lotto … Matt Burns … Mac O’Brien, senior associate at Hamilton Place Strategies … Suzanne Merkelson … Addie Bryant … Sean Kennedy, former Obama WH aide turned SVP for global gov’t affairs for Airlines for America … Steve Duprey … Diane Zeleny … Bill Shuler … Christopher Minakowski is 46 … Dominic Vilmain … Abby Spring … Timothy Gannon … Heather Matson … Addisu Demissie (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) … Steven Holmes … Dee Sachetti … Terrance Green … Pat Boone is 83 … Morgan Freeman is 8-0 … Heidi Klum is 44 … Alanis Morissette is 43 (h/ts AP)
****** A message from Morgan Stanley: Capital creates light in new places. Nearly a decade ago, First Solar had a bold idea: make solar power an affordable alternative to conventional energy. Since then, Morgan Stanley has helped First Solar raise capital to expand into new markets. Now, regions from the Atacama Desert in Chile to rural India have access to clean, renewable energy. With our help, First Solar is enabling a world powered by reliable and affordable solar electricity. Global business—it’s something to see. morganstanley.com/firstsolar
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learnprogress · 7 years
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BREAKING: Trump Openly THREATENS Any Lawmaker Who Opposes Him
Neither Democrats OR Republicans are safe because Donald Trump is THREATENING everyone on Capitol Hill. Now, Trump is warning Republicans to go along with Trumpcare … or else.
We’ve all heard by now of Trump’s benefits-gouging plan to replace Obamacare. And many of its proposals are so shocking that fierce bipartisan opposition has opened up against Trumpcare in recent days.
We expected the Democrats to rail against Trump’s healthcare plan. What we DIDN’T expect was for so many Republicans, even conservative ones, to rail against it too.
But now, and with fear as his tool, Trump is moving to stifle ANY Republican dissent against Trumpcare. The Orange Tyrant is threatening to support 2018 primary challengers against anyone in the GOP who doesn’t COMPLETELY submit to his disastrous vision for American healthcare.
Trump sent this threat loud and clear during a White House meeting with Republican leaders earlier this week. He told the GOP they have two options: either accept Trumpcare in its current form or get booted out in 2018 by radical pro-Trump challengers.
“The President will respond as circumstances dictate,” one anonymous Republican said about the meeting. “He has unique capacities; I wouldn’t want to be the one he tests them out on.”
Read between the lines here and you can already see that Trump is getting into the heads of the GOP. Through a culture of fear, Trump will continue to coerce anyone who opposes him.
And honestly, Trump certainly has the advantage here and Republicans know it. Many of the GOPers Trump is threatening come from extremely red pro-Trump districts, meaning that Trump would have no problem finding primary challengers to unseat them.
If Trump told his supporters to jump off a bridge, they would do it. So if he tells them to support an insurgent primary challenger against an “establishment” Republican, they’d certainly do that, too.
And there’s already rumors floating around that Trump’s going to unseat one or two Republicans in 2018 just to show that he is someone to be FEARED. That’s the behavior of a tyrant, not of a president.
North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows has been spearheading recent conservative attacks against Trumpcare. But now even he is obviously taking Trump’s threats to heart.
“The President has a very powerful bully pulpit and a very powerful tweet,” Meadows said. “I would never want to take on the President in either of those realms.”
Whatever happened to having principles and standing up for what is right? In Trump’s America, those days are long gone, seeing as how the Orange Tyrant will sink to any level in order to make sure that he has the total submission of the GOP.
Trump didn’t even win the popular vote in 2016 – he’s a minority president that has NO mandate to gut the American Dream with his nightmarish policies. We must hold Team Trump to account before they run our nation completely into the ground.
Help the Resistance by raising awareness. Do your part in the fight against Trump by sharing this story on Facebook NOW.
The post BREAKING: Trump Openly THREATENS Any Lawmaker Who Opposes Him appeared first on Learn Progress.
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itsfinancethings · 4 years
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In the heat of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made sure he checked in with his Republican colleague and longtime friend, Florida lawmaker Francis Rooney. Democrats were rushing the investigation, McCarthy reminded Rooney, according to a source familiar with the exchange, and he wanted to make sure Rooney had access to the facts and knew he could come to him with any questions.
Rooney was one of many members McCarthy spoke with throughout the process, but it was a critical moment given the lawmaker’s concerns. Democrats were in the midst of leading closed-door depositions as part of their probe assessing if Trump had leveraged foreign assistance to Ukraine in exchange for a promise of an investigation into a political rival, and the information coming from the hearings was damaging. Rooney, who heard the testimonies as a member of one of the committees conducting the inquiry, had told reporters he was considering breaking with the party to vote for Trump’s impeachment. It was the furthest any Republican had publicly gone in acknowledging that President’s conduct was potentially impeachable.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer both met with Rooney on Tuesday to try and get him to vote with them, according to a GOP leadership aide. But in the end, Rooney voted against impeachment, and Republicans stayed unified — a major win for the party that followed a months-long campaign of briefings and email blasts by House leadership. “Never in the history of our country has a president been impeached on a party-line vote,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told TIME in an interview in his Capitol Hill office on the eve of the vote.
The accomplishment is a blow to Democrats, who now face an election year with the risk that voters view impeachment as a partisan-motivated power play rather than an honest defense of the constitution. When Democrats formally launched the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, Republicans’ unity was hardly a given. No one knew what would emerge from the ensuing investigation. The road toward impeachment for both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, while divisive, had ultimately wielded bipartisan support, so much so in Nixon’s case that he chose to resign rather than face the circus in Congress. Republicans knew that their best weapon against the almost inevitable prospect of Trump becoming the third commander-in-chief in U.S. history to have an impeachment asterisk next to his name was party unity.
Rooney’s office declined to comment. But two days before Rooney spoke out, Scalise had held the first of what would become weekly impeachment briefings for members. Huddled in the basement of the Capitol, Republicans would hear from the lawmakers sitting in on the closed-door depositions, such as Reps. Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe and Lee Zeldin, who discounted the narrative emerging in testimony that Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had orchestrated a shadow foreign policy to push Ukraine to conduct politically beneficial investigations. Senators Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, two of Trump’s top defenders, also made appearances, according to a whip source.
“My objective has always been to get the facts to our members,” said Scalise. When the inquiry first began, he argued, Democrats were cherry picking information to spotlight from the closed-door hearings that were putting some Republicans in a bind because they couldn’t access the full testimony. “It raised all these questions,” he said.
The key point the lawmakers repeatedly hammered home at these briefings, Scalise said, was the witnesses’ lack of firsthand knowledge of the President’s intentions. “It’s one thing to say, well, I’ve heard a rumor that somebody did something bad. It’s another thing to then have talked to somebody who said, ‘Well no I never saw the person do that. It never happened,” he explained. “And so that was our objective.”
Both McCarthy and Scalise were in contact with members who had questions or concerns – like Rooney – throughout the process, sources said. Beginning on October 2nd, McCarthy’s office has circulated an e-mail every morning to Republican members of the House. The inaugural e-mail, obtained by TIME, was described as “daily guidance on the Democrats’ attempts to undo the 2016 election and impeach the President.” The days often closed with an e-mail from the office of Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, the third-highest Republican in the House, highlighting key quotes the party believed was essential to their story-line absolving the President, according to a leadership source. Scalise’s team circulated eight emails known as “whip tips” with statistics like the number of Democrats who supported impeachment before the Ukraine allegations surfaced.
The strategy clearly worked. These coordinated efforts succeeded in uniting the party in ways that even surprised its own members. Current and former Republican congressional aides marveled – and were also, they admitted, mystified – at how Rep. Elise Stefanik, hailed as one of the conference’s most bi-partisan members, stood side by side with Jordan, a founding member of the conservative Freedom Caucus and one of the lower chamber’s most notorious rabble rousers. McCarthy, never a natural ally of Jordan, placed him intermittently on the Intelligence Committee during the public hearings to maximize his effect as Trump’s top attack dog. “We’ve never been this united,” Rep. Mark Meadows, another founding member of the Freedom Caucus and a close Trump ally, boasted as he left his party’s weekly meeting Tuesday evening.
Rep. Peter King, a retiring lawmaker from New York who opposed the impeachment of both Trump and Clinton, credited this sense of unity to the universal disgust with what Republicans viewed as a rushed and biased process. House Republicans, King said, “have been sort of driven toward [Trump] by this, not because of his presidential leadership, but because they do feel that Democrats overplayed their hand, and this is not something that warrants impeachment.”
Democrats’ frustration is palpable. While the party leadership knew that the polarized environment made the prospect of a bipartisan impeachment highly improbable, they still had an inkling of hope that fresh evidence might compel some Republicans to break with their party. But few Republicans in the House would even admit what some Democrats did when defending Clinton against impeachment: that the President’s conduct was wrong, but not impeachable. The number of lawmakers who have criticized either Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president or the evidence that has come up in the subsequent congressional investigation has been limited to the most moderate members of the caucus, like Rooney and Reps. Fred Upton and Brian Fitzpatrick. “The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, displaying the rare emotion, semi-thundered from the dais at the close of his committee’s last public impeachment hearing. “Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?”
Republicans outside of Congress say the difference this time lies in Trump, his passionate base and the consequences of defiance. “Many House members are very unhappy with the President’s misbehavior and misconduct in office,” said one former Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If there was a secret ballot vote, there would be a hell of a lot of Republicans voting for impeachment.” William Cohen, a former Republican lawmaker and Secretary of Defense under Clinton who broke with his party to support articles of impeachment during Watergate, said the fear of these consequences just reflects how the Republican party’s been redrawn in the President’s image. “It’s not the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s the party of Trump.”
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itsfinancethings · 4 years
Link
In the heat of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made sure he checked in with his Republican colleague and longtime friend, Florida lawmaker Francis Rooney. Democrats were rushing the investigation, McCarthy reminded Rooney, according to a source familiar with the exchange, and he wanted to make sure Rooney had access to the facts and knew he could come to him with any questions.
Rooney was one of many members McCarthy spoke with throughout the process, but it was a critical moment given the lawmaker’s concerns. Democrats were in the midst of leading closed-door depositions as part of their probe assessing if Trump had leveraged foreign assistance to Ukraine in exchange for a promise of an investigation into a political rival, and the information coming from the hearings was damaging. Rooney, who heard the testimonies as a member of one of the committees conducting the inquiry, had told reporters he was considering breaking with the party to vote for Trump’s impeachment. It was the furthest any Republican had publicly gone in acknowledging that President’s conduct was potentially impeachable.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer both met with Rooney on Tuesday to try and get him to vote with them, according to a GOP leadership aide. But in the end, Rooney voted against impeachment, and Republicans stayed unified — a major win for the party that followed a months-long campaign of briefings and email blasts by House leadership. “Never in the history of our country has a president been impeached on a party-line vote,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told TIME in an interview in his Capitol Hill office on the eve of the vote. “And that will happen tomorrow.”
The accomplishment is a blow to Democrats, who now face an election year with the risk that voters view impeachment as a partisan-motivated power play rather than an honest defense of the constitution. When Democrats formally launched the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, Republicans’ unity was hardly a given. No one knew what would emerge from the ensuing investigation. The road toward impeachment for both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, while divisive, had ultimately wielded bipartisan support, so much so in Nixon’s case that he chose to resign rather than face the circus in Congress. Republicans knew that their best weapon against the almost inevitable prospect of Trump becoming the third commander-in-chief in U.S. history to have an impeachment asterisk next to his name was party unity.
Rooney’s office declined to comment. But two days before Rooney spoke out, Scalise had held the first of what would become weekly impeachment briefings for members. Huddled in the basement of the Capitol, Republicans would hear from the lawmakers sitting in on the closed-door depositions, such as Reps. Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe and Lee Zeldin, who discounted the narrative emerging in testimony that Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani had orchestrated a shadow foreign policy to push Ukraine to conduct politically beneficial investigations. Senators Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, two of Trump’s top defenders, also made appearances, according to a whip source.
“My objective has always been to get the facts to our members,” said Scalise. When the inquiry first began, he argued, Democrats were cherry picking information to spotlight from the closed-door hearings that were putting some Republicans in a bind because they couldn’t access the full testimony. “It raised all these questions,” he said.
The key point the lawmakers repeatedly hammered home at these briefings, Scalise said, was the witnesses’ lack of firsthand knowledge of the President’s intentions. “It’s one thing to say, well, I’ve heard a rumor that somebody did something bad. It’s another thing to then have talked to somebody who said, ‘Well no I never saw the person do that. It never happened,” he explained. “And so that was our objective.”
Both McCarthy and Scalise were in contact with members who had questions or concerns – like Rooney – throughout the process, sources said. Beginning on October 2nd, McCarthy’s office has circulated an e-mail every morning to Republican members of the House. The inaugural e-mail, obtained by TIME, was described as “daily guidance on the Democrats’ attempts to undo the 2016 election and impeach the President.” The days often closed with an e-mail from the office of Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, the third-highest Republican in the House, highlighting key quotes the party believed was essential to their story-line absolving the President, according to a leadership source. Scalise’s team circulated eight emails known as “whip tips” with statistics like the number of Democrats who supported impeachment before the Ukraine allegations surfaced.
The strategy clearly worked. These coordinated efforts succeeded in uniting the party in ways that even surprised its own members. Current and former Republican congressional aides marveled – and were also, they admitted, mystified – at how Rep. Elise Stefanik, hailed as one of the conference’s most bi-partisan members, stood side by side with Jordan, a founding member of the conservative Freedom Caucus and one of the lower chamber’s most notorious rabble rousers. McCarthy, never a natural ally of Jordan, placed him intermittently on the Intelligence Committee during the public hearings to maximize his effect as Trump’s top attack dog. “We’ve never been this united,” Rep. Mark Meadows, another founding member of the Freedom Caucus and a close Trump ally, boasted as he left his party’s weekly meeting Tuesday evening.
Rep. Peter King, a retiring lawmaker from New York who opposed the impeachment of both Trump and Clinton, credited this sense of unity to the universal disgust with what Republicans viewed as a rushed and biased process. House Republicans, King said, “have been sort of driven toward [Trump] by this, not because of his presidential leadership, but because they do feel that Democrats overplayed their hand, and this is not something that warrants impeachment.”
Democrats’ frustration is palpable. While the party leadership knew that the polarized environment made the prospect of a bipartisan impeachment highly improbable, they still had an inkling of hope that fresh evidence might compel some Republicans to break with their party. But few Republicans in the House would even admit what some Democrats did when defending Clinton against impeachment: that the President’s conduct was wrong, but not impeachable. The number of lawmakers who have criticized either Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president or the evidence that has come up in the subsequent congressional investigation has been limited to the most moderate members of the caucus, like Rooney and Reps. Fred Upton and Brian Fitzpatrick. “The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, displaying the rare emotion, semi-thundered from the dais at the close of his committee’s last public impeachment hearing. “Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?”
Republicans outside of Congress say the difference this time lies in Trump, his passionate base and the consequences of defiance. “Many House members are very unhappy with the President’s misbehavior and misconduct in office,” said one former Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If there was a secret ballot vote, there would be a hell of a lot of Republicans voting for impeachment.” William Cohen, a former Republican lawmaker and Secretary of Defense under Clinton who broke with his party to support articles of impeachment during Watergate, said the fear of these consequences just reflects how the Republican party’s been redrawn in the President’s image. “It’s not the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s the party of Trump.”
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