We are going to learn so many things in the next four years, or however long the Trump presidency lasts. The question is how painful the education will be. One thing we are now in the process of learning, at a new level, is the 18th century nature of the American presidency.
It is not unique but it is a profound outlier in modern democratic states.
While transitioning on Tuesday, Donald Trump and his three adult children found time to meet with Indian business partners to discuss expanding Trump businesses in India.
For investigative reporters Trumpmerica is going to be like fishing trout in a stocked pond.
US Constitution: Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8.
“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
The US President is prohibited from accepting gifts or money from foreign governments. But Trump’s new hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, just held an event last week pitching foreign diplomatic delegations on moving their business to Trump’s hotel.
I’m a huge supporter of infrastructure spending – both for the multiple economic benefits of large-scale infrastructure projects and the more mundane reason that the things you build are good to have: roads, modern rail systems, airports, bridges that don’t collapse, modern energy infrastructure. The list is almost endless. This makes a lot of people excited about Donald Trump’s push for infrastructure spending. But put on the brakes and don’t get excited. As I mentioned a few days ago, Trump isn’t proposing major spending on infrastructure projects. He’s proposing ‘public private partnerships’, which as we explained here are in most cases efficient ways to sell off public goods to private corporations.
But it’s actually even worse than that.
Though Hillary Clinton lost North Carolina, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who shepherded into law a crackdown on minority voting, the insipid ‘bathroom law’ and much more, could not manage a win like Donald Trump. Not by much – only about 5,000 votes. But he lost. Now he is trying to hold on to power the way he wielded power – by claiming the election is being stolen by election fraud.
Jeff Sessions running the Justice Department represents a huge step backward for voting rights in the United States. It’s a big step backwards on numerous issues. But this is the issue I’m focusing on in this post. In one way it will bring us back to the dark days of the Bush DOJ when political operatives tried to use the country’s US Attorneys to drive a voter suppression agenda around the country. That, you’ll remember, was the backstory to the US Attorney firing scandal. The fired US Attorneys were ones who wouldn’t play ball or resisted playing ball when it came to bringing trumped up ‘voter fraud’ prosecutions as part of that campaign of voter suppression. I think we can be confident that that will now return with a vengeance.
But there’s a broader point I’d like to make on Sessions.
From TPM Reader AK …
Been reading you for over a decade and don’t think I’ve ever written in. I live in a progressive Southern city and other than a comment by a high school teacher have never encountered anti-semitism.
Interesting moment on CNN about an hour ago.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was on CNN talking about the Trump transition. In the course of that conversation there was this exchange with Wolf Blitzer about General Flynn.
BLITZER: Let’s talk about another issue that’s come up, his connections with Russia. He made frequent appearances on Russian state media, the propaganda arm of Putin rt. He was photographed as you know sitting next to president Putin at one of their big Galas exactly a year ago. He was paid to make a speech there. Is that a problem, you think?
We’ve been hunting around to try to find out where everyone stands on the Medicare phase out question, as you know. And we may have found a Republican who’s on the fence or wavering about supporting Paul Ryan’s plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. Most Reps and Senators line up along expected party lines. We’re most interested in the ones that don’t. We may have found one: Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ).
An important corrective from TPM Reader JES …
So much of the response from Dems in post-mortems seems like they are treating a problem that didn’t occur. Democrats won the popular vote (by what looks like it will be millions of votes) and would have won control of the House absent gerrymandering. It was a consequential election not a landslide. These things are different. The consequences haven’t been greater in a long time, but acting like it was 1984 or 1972 is an error all in itself.