monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Review papers from the Nixon White House and you can see just how much Nixon and his team pined for a media environment resembling the one today.

“Nixon was always complaining that he had no defenders,” John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel, and current CNN contributor, told me Friday.

As a memo from one adviser read in 1970: “The lens through which our message gets through is a distorted lens,” therefore “we ought to give consideration to ways and means if necessary to acquire either a government or other network through which we can tell our story.”

When a separate memo presented a more detailed plan for a pro-administration news service, White House records show, another adviser, Roger E. Ailes, raised his hand to start it. The plan fizzled, but Mr. Ailes, who died last month, would start the Fox News Channel some 25 years later.

A day after Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would testify this week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic senators on Sunday urged the panel to question him about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in a public hearing, rather than behind closed doors.

It was unclear on Sunday whether the committee planned to question the attorney general on Tuesday in an open or closed session.

Ivanka Trump Says Father Felt ‘Vindicated’ by Comey Testimony

With newly elected Scott Walker in the governor’s office and a firm grip on the legislature, Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 had a unique opportunity to redraw the state’s electoral maps and fortify their party’s future.

Aides were dispatched to a private law firm to keep their work out of public view. They employed the most precise technology available to dissect new Census Bureau data and convert it into reliably Republican districts even if the party’s fortunes soured. Democrats were kept in the dark, and even GOP incumbents had to sign confidentiality agreements before their revamped districts were revealed to them. Only a handful of people saw the entire map until it was unveiled and quickly approved.

In the following year’s elections, when Republicans got just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote, they still captured a 60-to-39 seat advantage in the State Assembly.

Now, the Supreme Court is being asked to uphold a lower court’s finding that the Wisconsin redistricting effort was more than just extraordinary — it was unconstitutional.

I think we need to confront the possibility that many Republicans simply don't view their party as playing a role in a democracy anymore.

Ivanka Trump on Monday morning told the hosts of “Fox and Friends” that she wasn’t expecting the “level of viciousness” she has experienced since her father was elected president.

McCain: America's leadership standing in the world was better under Obama

Roughly 19.5 million Americans tuned in on Thursday to watch James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, unspool the tale of his awkward, unsettling and, at times, ethically questionable encounters with President Trump.

That is about the same number of people who watched Game 2 of this week’s N.B.A. finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Note, that 19.5 million figure is a low estimate. It doesn’t account for people who watched on PBS or C-SPAN, those who attended viewing parties, or those who tuned in online.

And given the fact that the hearing was at 10 a.m. (ET) on a weekday – a time when millions of Americans were already at work – it’s likely that the online audience was considerable.

All of this certainly reflects an enormous public appetite for information related to the president’s Russia scandal, but I also believe this is emblematic of a broader civic awakening that’s quite encouraging.


After Election Day 2016, it wasn’t at all clear how Trump’s critics would respond to his victory, and it was easy to imagine much of the country giving up, withdrawing, and disengaging from the political process altogether.

But by and large, it seems the evidence is now pointing in the opposite direction. We’ve seen enormous rallies and protests, with attendance that’s far exceeded expectations. We’ve watched people who aren’t generally active in politics pick up the phone to register concerns with their representatives on Capitol Hill. We’ve seen lawmakers face town-hall crowds larger than at any point in their careers. We’ve seen Americans holding placards such as, “Not usually a sign guy, but jeez.”

And we’ve seen tens of millions of Americans watch a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing with testimony from the former director of the FBI.

Sure, showing up for the women’s march takes considerably more effort than picking up the TV remote on a Thursday morning, but I think there’s more than one to way to demonstrate civic engagement, and the more Americans give a darn about politics, the healthier our democracy becomes.

I heard MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently refer to the “awakening of civic consciousness” in response to Trump’s presidency, and with each passing week, it’s heartening to discover fresh evidence of that phenomenon spreading.

Article 1 of the Impeachment of Richard Nixon....interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;
Adopted 27-11 by the House Judiciary Committee. Nixon resigned before the House could vote on it.

That fact that the Democrats have in the past shamefully abused the law to lynch a president is not justification for them doing it again. It is instead justification for outlawing the Democratic Party in America.

Whether it is a crime [Trump's attempt to get Comey to give up investigating Flynn], is not relevant at this time.

Give the Democrats a pass for committing actual crimes, and then lynch Republicans for doing nothing wrong?

Never!

There you go again, demeaning my existence.

Oh give me a ******* break. On Fox this weekend...

Quote:

Ivanka Trump on Monday morning told the hosts of “Fox and Friends” that she wasn’t expecting the “level of viciousness” she has experienced since her father was elected president.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ivanka-trump-viciousness-dc

Surprised at the viciousness? Where the hell was her brain during the GOP primaries or the debates with Clinton when her poor victimized father was continually advancing a level of insult against pretty much every contender that none of us had ever, in our lifetimes, witnessed before? What was she doing when her saintly father encouraged supporters at his rallies to rough up protesters? Was she trying on shoes when her pathological old man was demeaning female reporters and any women who had stood up to him or who had accused him of assault?

‘She’s a filthy liar’: NY Post columnist slams Ivanka for feigning ignorance about ‘viciousness’ in politics.
New York Post columnist and editor of Commentary magazine John Podhoretz called out Ivanka Trump on Monday after she told Fox News that she was surprised at the “viciousness” directed at her father.

“Her father said Ben Carson was a psychopath and Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK and she wasn’t expecting viciousness. She’s a filthy liar,” he wrote.

On my screen, 36 user ignored posts in last three pages. They line up like tombstones in an institutional cemetery.