One other nugget from the Axios on HBO interview of Jared Kushner:
Like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones more than half a century ago, the milk shaking craze has finally crossed the Atlantic. Rep. Matt Gaetz got milkshaked. It started a few weeks ago when Tommy Robinson got milkshaked in Warrington by a man named Danyaal Mahmud. Robinson is a UK version of what we call the alt-right in the US – all the same mix of anti-immigrants, white nationalist politics combined with various kinds of “free speech” preening. (His real name is actually Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon.) It quickly expanded to other rightist figures like Nigel Farage and soon enough left wing activists were bringing either milkshakes to rallies to troll far right figures or even symbolic, effigy milkshakes like this woman below. Read More
Please don’t miss this report from Kate Riga about some disturbing events in the New York City area. We heard about this over the weekend. A notorious anti-Semite who we’ve somewhat awkwardly referred to as a ‘holocaust distorter’ was scheduled to speak at a number of Catholic churches in the greater New York area this week. We refer to Ewa Kurek as a ‘distorter’ because, in a twist, she does not so much deny the Holocaust happened as she claims the Jews were complicit in the Holocaust and even its organizers. Kurek is a bonafide credentialed historian. An April article in Tablet referred to her as “maybe the only legitimate Holocaust scholar to have become an alleged Holocaust revisionist or distorter during a later phase of her career.” Two of the events were canceled today after a group of concerned citizens wrote to the Bishop of Brooklyn asking him to cancel the events.
This is part of a larger story I touched on back in early April. Back then I wrote a series of posts about an anti-Semitic Polish nationalist rally in New York City. The focus was on a new US law aimed at restitution for Holocaust victims. It’s become a lightning rod for Polish nationalists both in Poland and the US, spawning protests which range from vaguely anti-Semitic to extremely anti-Semitic. Kurek’s tour is part of that same agitation. The whole upsurge is at one level triggered by this controversy. But watching it it’s clear it’s dredged up attitudes and hostilities that seem unbroken going back 70 or 80 years. Here’s Kate’s report.
The US Ambassador to the United Kingdom created a minor stir a few days ago when he said the NHS (the British national health care service) would be “on the table” in a trade negotiation between the US and the UK after Britain leaves the EU. President Trump just got asked about this and confirmed it. But it wasn’t clear that he knew what the NHS is.
lol. Not clear President Trump knows what the NHS (british nat health care service) is. pic.twitter.com/drbRw8pfR9
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 4, 2019
I continue to believe, more strongly than you can imagine, that impeaching President Trump is silly and a waste of time. That’s not because I think the politics are bad, as people always seem to assume when you say you don’t support an immediate move toward impeachment. I simply think it doesn’t accomplish anything. So it really doesn’t matter what the politics are. The only real question to me is whether Democrats succeed in their real shot at ending Trump’s presidency, which is in November 2020. It’s an existential challenge for the whole country. Read More
The Trump State Department hired a contractor to attack US citizens on Twitter over Iran policy. And the contractor seems to have an oddly close relationship to a major pro-Iran war think tank.
There’s a new poll out of Michigan yesterday and it shows President Trump getting crushed by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
In recent days we’ve been talking about the pace and strategy of Democratic investigations of President Trump. Impeach or not to impeach has taken up a lot of the discussion. We’ve also discussed the need to dramatically up the pace and the aggressiveness of the push, quite apart from whether or not it’s labeled an impeachment inquiry. As I’ve been at pains to explain, when you have a recalcitrant, indeed a law-defying President, most of this quickly ends up in the courts. There the logic of legal strategy usually fits at best uneasily with the logic of politics. No one’s going to be satisfied with the pace. Keeping the substance and the optics and the strategy in alignment is a complicated task.
As a general matter I’ve assumed, I think accurately, that people’s aims are on the up and up whatever disagreements there may be about strategy. But just in the last few days I’ve started to wonder about Rep. Richard Neal (D), dean of the Massachusetts delegation and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That’s the tax writing committee which is normally of most concern to policy wonks and corporate lobbyists. But in our Trump corruption moment it’s a position with unique hold over the question of getting the President’s tax returns.