It has always been a struggle to determine what Donald Trump is proposing, as he changes his positions so often that it difficult to square what he says one day with what he said the day or months before. A classic illustration of how quickly Trump changes positions on issues came when in the course of a day, a woman who has an abortion should suffer a penalty translated to that same person being a "victim."
The initial attempt for a surrogate to offer a way to interpret Trump probably came when spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that what Trump says should not be taken literally, but figuratively. Very recently, a surrogate was trying to explain why Trump has not held a news conference since July 2016, when Trump had blasted Hillary Clinton for not holding press conferences. The surrogate started out by arguing that Donald Trump was a very precise person, who gathers his facts together before giving them out to the public. The interviewer then said that the Trump campaign had previously advised the public to take Trump seriously, not literally The surrogate replied that it was figuratively, not literally, but his own advice was to take him "symbolically."
Kellyanne Conway, the new special adviser to Donald Trump, has had to twist herself into a pretzel many times while trying to explain away what Trump was saying since she joined his campaign team. I believe it was during the six-day period beginning with August 20, when Trump was debating with himself about whether he was softening or hardening his position on immigration, that Kellyanne finally had enough of trying to explain Trump's position, and simply advised everyone to "stay tuned."
An excerpted video of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow interview of Kellyanne provides an insight into Kellyanne's spin technique in defending the indefensible regarding Donald Trump:
Maddow started the segment by playing a big lie in Donald Trump's post-election stump speech:
"How about when a major anchor who hosted a debate started crying when she realized we won," Donald Trump said lyingly. "No, tell me this isn't true."
Rachel Marrow corrected the record.
"We know from the number of times he's told that story that he is talking about Martha Raddatz," Maddow said to Conway. "Martha Raddatz did not, in fact, cry on election night. She did not say, 'No tell me this isn't true.' There were no tears streaming down her face. What I am bothered by is the way he is singling her out. Not just with wrong information but singling her out. Is this how even a reporter like Martha Raddatz is going to be treated by this president?"
"No. And I would have updates, but they are privately held," Conway said. "We've been discussing this with ABC News. I've talked to the president of ABC News directly, and I have talked to the president-elect. And look, we all have enormous respect for Martha Raddatz as a journalist. ... I would like to broaden the conversation if I may in terms of..."
Rachel did not allow her to spin away.
"But wait. Are we going to get an apology from the president-elect on that?" Maddow forcefully asked. "He is telling a story about her that is not true and telling it to great effect and having people jeer her. Will he correct this?"
"So apologies like this are not made publicly necessarily," Kellyanne responded.
"But the accusation was made publicly," said Maddow.
"So the accusation was made by a number of people," Kellyanne said. "I am just telling you I've got an update to what you presented there. That's all I will say. And it will make you happy."
"Just to stay specific to Martha Raddatz here," Maddow said. "He did say something about her publicly that isn't true and until he corrects it publicly, the people who heard him say it will continue to believe a untrue thing about a woman who doesn't deserve it. I will just make that case to you."
What has spoken to me most forcefully about the smallness of Kellyanne Conway's character is her characterization as "magnanimous," Donald Trump's post-election announcement that he will not seek a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton. Trump spent an entire campaign trying to criminalize Clinton. There is that indelible image of him leaving his podium in one of the debates, looming over Clinton, and telling her that one of the first things he would do if elected president would be to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her criminal behavior. And what criminal behavior is Trump alluding to?
Benghazi was an obsessive Republican vendetta against Clinton, in which multiple investigations found no evidence of criminal behavior. Giving well-paid speeches to Wall Street was likely a mistake in judgment but was not in any way criminal behavior. Her use of a private email server while secretary of state was extensively investigated by the FBI and no laws were found to be broken. Although quid pro quos were alleged in the operation of the Clinton Foundation, no smoking guns were found to have been fired. When a quid pro quo seemed to have been found by CBS News in an exchange of emails between an FBI agent and a member of Clinton's staff, anchor Scott Pelley had to appear the next night, and, like a whipped puppy, disavow the previous night's contention. If, however, statutes of limitations had not protected Donald Trump from sexual assault charges and business practices that may have exceeded lawful bounds, then we may have had a story with legs.
ADDENDUMS:
*The Pentagon has buried a study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste, fearing slashing of its budget. The Pentagon is spending about a quarter of its budget on overhead and core business operations, such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management.
*Donald Trump wants to cancel a contract with Boeing to build a new Air Force One, saying it will cost over $4 billion. Boeing has a $170 million contract to design a replacement. If the contract with Boeing is canceled, the most logical manufacturer to build a new Air Force One is Airbus of France.
*In the presidential campaign, Donald Trump stated of intelligence agents: "I won't use them, because they've made such bad decisions."
Friday, December 30, 2016
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Rise of he Surveillance State
October 2001: Six weeks after 9/11, President Bush signs the USA Patriot Act, which weakens protections against government collection of Americans' communications and personal records.
February 2002: The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon is "developing technologies to give federal officials instant access to vast new surveillance and information analysis systems." Following an outcry from civil libertarians, the Total Information Awareness program is eventually shut down.
March 2004: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card corner Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room, pressuring him to extend the National Security Agency's secret warrantless wiretapping program. The program will be revealed to the public a year and a half later by the New York Times.
March 2006: The Patriot Act is reauthorized.
May 2006: USA Today reports the NSA has been tracking millions of Americans' phone calls with the help of major telecom companies. A few weeks later a former AT&T technician reveals that the company let the NSA tap into its fiber-optic lines in 2002, enabling it to broadly monitor internet and phone traffic in the United States.
September 2007: Microsoft becomes the first major internet firm to cooperate with the NSA's PRISM program, allowing the NSA to collect data on search history, email, file transfers, and live chats. Over the next few years, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and others become part of the program, which won't be revealed to the public until 2013.
July 2008: Bush signs the FISA Amendments Act, which retroactively codifies the warrantless wiretapping program and compels telecoms and internet firms to give the government access to private communications if one party is "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. It also gives retroactive immunity to telecoms that handed over customers' private data without a warrant.
January 2009: Google begins giving user data to the NSA under the PRISM program.
June 2009: A federal judge upholds the FISA provision giving telecoms retroactive immunity. The same day, Facebook starts participating in the PRISM program.
March 2010: A federal judge rules that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is illegal, the second time the program has been found unlawful in federal court. Like the earlier ruling, the decision is later overturned on a technicality.
May 2011: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who as a member of he intelligence committee has access to classified materials, warns: "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry."
April-May 2112: A part of a leak investigation, the Department of Justice secretly obtains two months of phone records from multiple Associated Press offices and reporters. The AP's top executive calls it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion into the newsgathering process."
July 2012: In a letter to Wyden, the Office of Director of National intelligence (DNI) acknowledges that some NSA activities have "circumvented the spirit of the law." It also concedes that a federal judge determined some NSA activities to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
December 2012: Obama signs a five-year extension of the FISA Act. Amendments that would provide more oversight of mass surveillance are defeated in the Senate.
March 2013: Wyden asks DNI chief James Clapper in a congressional hearing if the NSA collects any information on millions of Americans. Clapper says no.
June 2013: Citing leaked documents from national contractor Edward Snowden, the Guardian reports the NSA has been collecting millions of Verizon customers' call data. A day later, the Guardian and the Washington Post reveal the existence of PRISM. Questions about the revelations, Clapper admits that he lied in his congressional testimony.
August 15, 2303: Based on more Snowden documents, the Post reports that the NSA has "broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year" since 2008, Wyden and Mark Udall (D-COLO.) say the reported violations are "just the tip of a larger iceberg."
August 29, 2013: The Post publishes details of the United States' $52.6 billion intelligence "black budget," more that $18 billion of which is dedicated to CIA and NSA data collection and analysis operations.
September 5, 2013: The New York Times, the Guardian, and Propublica report that the NSA has engineered ways to crack the average person's "everyday communications in the Internet age."
September 9, 2013: Der Spiegel reports that the NSA has the ability to bypass security features of iPhones, Android devices, and BlackBerrys, allowing it to access users' contacts, location data, photos, and possibly credit card numbers and passwords. (Source: AJ Vicens, "Rise of the Surveillance State," Mother Jones, November/December 2013.)
February 2002: The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon is "developing technologies to give federal officials instant access to vast new surveillance and information analysis systems." Following an outcry from civil libertarians, the Total Information Awareness program is eventually shut down.
March 2004: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card corner Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room, pressuring him to extend the National Security Agency's secret warrantless wiretapping program. The program will be revealed to the public a year and a half later by the New York Times.
March 2006: The Patriot Act is reauthorized.
May 2006: USA Today reports the NSA has been tracking millions of Americans' phone calls with the help of major telecom companies. A few weeks later a former AT&T technician reveals that the company let the NSA tap into its fiber-optic lines in 2002, enabling it to broadly monitor internet and phone traffic in the United States.
September 2007: Microsoft becomes the first major internet firm to cooperate with the NSA's PRISM program, allowing the NSA to collect data on search history, email, file transfers, and live chats. Over the next few years, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and others become part of the program, which won't be revealed to the public until 2013.
July 2008: Bush signs the FISA Amendments Act, which retroactively codifies the warrantless wiretapping program and compels telecoms and internet firms to give the government access to private communications if one party is "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. It also gives retroactive immunity to telecoms that handed over customers' private data without a warrant.
January 2009: Google begins giving user data to the NSA under the PRISM program.
June 2009: A federal judge upholds the FISA provision giving telecoms retroactive immunity. The same day, Facebook starts participating in the PRISM program.
March 2010: A federal judge rules that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is illegal, the second time the program has been found unlawful in federal court. Like the earlier ruling, the decision is later overturned on a technicality.
May 2011: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who as a member of he intelligence committee has access to classified materials, warns: "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry."
April-May 2112: A part of a leak investigation, the Department of Justice secretly obtains two months of phone records from multiple Associated Press offices and reporters. The AP's top executive calls it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion into the newsgathering process."
July 2012: In a letter to Wyden, the Office of Director of National intelligence (DNI) acknowledges that some NSA activities have "circumvented the spirit of the law." It also concedes that a federal judge determined some NSA activities to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
December 2012: Obama signs a five-year extension of the FISA Act. Amendments that would provide more oversight of mass surveillance are defeated in the Senate.
March 2013: Wyden asks DNI chief James Clapper in a congressional hearing if the NSA collects any information on millions of Americans. Clapper says no.
June 2013: Citing leaked documents from national contractor Edward Snowden, the Guardian reports the NSA has been collecting millions of Verizon customers' call data. A day later, the Guardian and the Washington Post reveal the existence of PRISM. Questions about the revelations, Clapper admits that he lied in his congressional testimony.
August 15, 2303: Based on more Snowden documents, the Post reports that the NSA has "broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year" since 2008, Wyden and Mark Udall (D-COLO.) say the reported violations are "just the tip of a larger iceberg."
August 29, 2013: The Post publishes details of the United States' $52.6 billion intelligence "black budget," more that $18 billion of which is dedicated to CIA and NSA data collection and analysis operations.
September 5, 2013: The New York Times, the Guardian, and Propublica report that the NSA has engineered ways to crack the average person's "everyday communications in the Internet age."
September 9, 2013: Der Spiegel reports that the NSA has the ability to bypass security features of iPhones, Android devices, and BlackBerrys, allowing it to access users' contacts, location data, photos, and possibly credit card numbers and passwords. (Source: AJ Vicens, "Rise of the Surveillance State," Mother Jones, November/December 2013.)
Thursday, December 1, 2016
The Contemptuous Media Assault on Hillary Clinton
Harvard's Shorenstein Center's study of the media coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton found that in 2015 Trump received far more "good press" than "bad press; also, in 2015, the GOP race received twice the coverage of the Democratic race. In 11 of the 12 months in 2015, Clinton's "bad news" outpaced her "good news," usually by a "wide margin." From January 1 through December 31, 2015, only 28% of Clinton's media coverage revolved around her stance on key issues and 84% was negative. In contrast, 43% of Trump's coverage was negative.
The Shorenstein Center also found that Hillary Clinton's coverage was "substantially more negative" than that of Bernie Sanders, although Sanders got "much less" coverage than Clinton.
Hillary's e-mails were deemed important by the media but it didn't help news consumers make sense of the issue, what harm was caused and how her e-mails compared with those of other high elected officials.
Thomas Patterson of the Los Angeles Times found in his analysis that 91% of the Clinton e-mail-related news reports were negative in tone.
Since I watched both CBS and ABC evening news virtually every night during the presidential campaign, it was very clear to me that their reporters had instructions to root through that day's release of Clinton e-mails and find one or two that were damaging to Clinton. Even when the e-mails were not damaging when seriously examined, they were handled, as Thomas Patterson notes, in a negative tone. One example of this occurred when CBS's anchor, Scott Pelley, ran a clip supposedly exposing a quid pro quo between a F.B.I. official and a Clinton staffer, a dog-whipped Pelley had to retract the report the following evening.
A classic of the negative spin applied to coverage of Hillary Clinton was when CBS did a negative piece on Donald Trump and then did the teaser: "But it wasn't such a good day for Hillary Clinton either." Zounds! I thought. Hold the presses! Another damaging Hillary e-mail. No, the news was of a poll showing Hillary with an unfavorable rating of 59%. And what was Trump's unfavorable rating in the same poll? It was 60%.
Jeffrey Toobin nails down Donald Trump in one economical sentence; then relates faults of Hillary Clinton; followed by a description of how the deck was stacked against Hillary. "Trump is a serial liar, a shady businessman, a bigot, and a self-proclaimed abuser of women; Clinton has a sometimes unsteady relationship with the truth and a faulty devotion to information security. Media attention focused almost exclusively on these traits, rather than on, say, what either might actually do as president. That was followed by a cascade of leaks from the F.B.I., which was a rich irony, since the whole controversy supposedly involved Clinton's inability to keep secrets."
Toobin describes the letter from F.B.I. Director James Comey, informing relevant committees of Congress of an investigation of Anthony Weiner's e-mails, a third party not involved in national security matters, "as a much appreciated gift to the Trump campaign." Toobin says the letter was "outrageous for many reasons, starting with the fact that Comey violated Department of Justice policy by sending it. As a rule, prosecutors and investigators are supposed to refrain from offering updates on pending investigations."
"As Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee put it, 'Assuming she wins and the investigation comes forward, and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point in time, under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial." Jeffrey Toobin concludes: "A politics based on pursuit and accusation, rather than on reason and compromise, will address none of these problems." (Source: Jeffrey Toobin, "Another Round," The New Yorker, November 14, 2016.)
The Shorenstein Center also found that Hillary Clinton's coverage was "substantially more negative" than that of Bernie Sanders, although Sanders got "much less" coverage than Clinton.
Hillary's e-mails were deemed important by the media but it didn't help news consumers make sense of the issue, what harm was caused and how her e-mails compared with those of other high elected officials.
Thomas Patterson of the Los Angeles Times found in his analysis that 91% of the Clinton e-mail-related news reports were negative in tone.
Since I watched both CBS and ABC evening news virtually every night during the presidential campaign, it was very clear to me that their reporters had instructions to root through that day's release of Clinton e-mails and find one or two that were damaging to Clinton. Even when the e-mails were not damaging when seriously examined, they were handled, as Thomas Patterson notes, in a negative tone. One example of this occurred when CBS's anchor, Scott Pelley, ran a clip supposedly exposing a quid pro quo between a F.B.I. official and a Clinton staffer, a dog-whipped Pelley had to retract the report the following evening.
A classic of the negative spin applied to coverage of Hillary Clinton was when CBS did a negative piece on Donald Trump and then did the teaser: "But it wasn't such a good day for Hillary Clinton either." Zounds! I thought. Hold the presses! Another damaging Hillary e-mail. No, the news was of a poll showing Hillary with an unfavorable rating of 59%. And what was Trump's unfavorable rating in the same poll? It was 60%.
Jeffrey Toobin nails down Donald Trump in one economical sentence; then relates faults of Hillary Clinton; followed by a description of how the deck was stacked against Hillary. "Trump is a serial liar, a shady businessman, a bigot, and a self-proclaimed abuser of women; Clinton has a sometimes unsteady relationship with the truth and a faulty devotion to information security. Media attention focused almost exclusively on these traits, rather than on, say, what either might actually do as president. That was followed by a cascade of leaks from the F.B.I., which was a rich irony, since the whole controversy supposedly involved Clinton's inability to keep secrets."
Toobin describes the letter from F.B.I. Director James Comey, informing relevant committees of Congress of an investigation of Anthony Weiner's e-mails, a third party not involved in national security matters, "as a much appreciated gift to the Trump campaign." Toobin says the letter was "outrageous for many reasons, starting with the fact that Comey violated Department of Justice policy by sending it. As a rule, prosecutors and investigators are supposed to refrain from offering updates on pending investigations."
"As Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee put it, 'Assuming she wins and the investigation comes forward, and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point in time, under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial." Jeffrey Toobin concludes: "A politics based on pursuit and accusation, rather than on reason and compromise, will address none of these problems." (Source: Jeffrey Toobin, "Another Round," The New Yorker, November 14, 2016.)
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