Tag Archives: Trump

Ignorance & Anti-Semitism: Trump Tropes

It certainly seems like an odd way to campaign for votes.

Talking Points Memo recently reported on a speech Trump made to a mostly Jewish crowd, in which he accused Jews of being insufficiently loyal to Israel, and explained that he’d get the support of Jewish voters because Jews would vote to protect their wealth. (Paul Krugman has pointed out that only 17% of Jews voted Republican in the midterms, despite their relative affluence. But Trump wouldn’t know a fact if he fell over one.)

“We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more, I have to tell you that. We have to do it,” he said. “We have to get them to love Israel more. Because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people…they don’t love Israel enough.”

He also told the mostly Jewish audience that they wouldn’t vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president because, according to him, they want to protect their money from her proposed wealth tax.

Evidently, in what passes for Trump’s mind,  American Jews are all rich people displaying insufficient “dual loyalty.” Got it.

This wasn’t a “one off.” Trump has a history of characterizing Jews (and blacks and women and Muslims and…) in highly offensive ways. But in this particular speech, he evidently outdid himself. The Independent also covered the event, quoting Trump’s description of Jews as “brutal killers.”

“A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well; you’re brutal killers. You’re not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice,” Trump told the group, which is funded by Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino tycoon who’s a big supporter of the president….

The president also said he “doesn’t like” many Jewish people, but warned that the Democrats’ fiscal policies will mean they’ll vote for him.

“Even if you don’t like me — some of you don’t, [and] some of you I don’t like at all actually — you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes if they [the Democrats] get in,” he added.

An organization of Jewish Democrats was among those who responded to the remarks, which it called “deeply offensive,” and identified Donald Trump as the biggest threat facing American Jews today.

“We strongly denounce these vile and bigoted remarks in which the president – once again – used anti-Semitic stereotypes to characterize Jews as driven by money and insufficiently loyal to Israel. He even had the audacity to suggest that Jews ‘have no choice’ but to support him.

“American Jews do have a choice, and they’re not choosing President Trump or the Republican Party, which has been complicit in enacting his hateful agenda. In fact, Jewish support for the GOP has been halved since Trump has been in office, from 33 percent in 2014 to 17 percent in 2018, because Trump’s policies and rhetoric are completely antithetical to Jewish values.

Actually, it can be argued that Trump’s policies, rhetoric and behavior are also antithetical to genuine Christian values, as well as humanist values, Muslim values…

Whatever this and similar diatribes display about Trump’s values or lack thereof, they clearly reveal his intellectual limitations. Trump is simply incapable of understanding complexity or seeing nuance–he is thus incapable of seeing members of “tribes” other than his own as differentiated individuals. All Jews are rich businessmen, all African-Americans are criminals, all Muslims terrorists. All women are meat.

And let’s be honest: those attitudes permeate his base. The Republicans who support him do so because they share his bigotries, not despite them.

Trump may be the least self-aware human on the planet. He clearly has no clue how cringeworthy his utterances are, how laughable his boasts and glaringly obvious his ignorance.  Who else would campaign for the votes of a minority group by announcing his belief in bigoted stereotypes that have endangered that group for centuries?

This pathetic, barely literate, emotionally-crippled man would be a proper object of pity if he wasn’t able to do so much damage.

When I was growing up, the recurring question in my extended family–about social change, about political candidates, about pretty much everything–was, “is it good for the Jews?”

If there is clarity about anything these days, it’s this: Trump and his governing cabal are not good for the Jews–or, for that matter, for anyone else.

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Permission To Hate

A recent survey by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, confirms what most people who follow the news would have expected:  the incidence of hate crimes has increased.

According to the study, person-directed hate crime has increased 26.7% over the past five years. All hate crime has increased 20% in that same period, while violent crime overall increased only 3.3%. Figures for the 10-year period to 2008 show that the total number of hate crimes has increased, even as both crime in general and violent crime overall have declined.

It isn’t hyperbole or “fake news” to attribute much of that increase to the rhetoric of Donald Trump.

In a recent issue of Salon, Chauncy DeVega interviewed a CIA psychologist about Donald Trump’s “damaged personality.” The interviewee’s credentials were impressive.

Dr. Jerrold Post is the founding director of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. As the CIA’s head psychological profiler, he served under five American presidents of both political parties. Following his 21 years of service with the CIA, Post became a professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs at George Washington University.

Post is the author of 14 books. His latest (co-written with Stephanie Doucette) is “Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers.”

Asked to “make sense” of Trump, Post responded with an analysis that gave me chills–but is also consistent with the observations of other mental health professionals who have expressed concerns about Trump’s mental state.

A famous Canadian psychoanalyst observed, “The leader is the creation of his followers.” This is a very powerful relationship. Indeed, many people have been puzzled, given Donald Trump’s extremism, that the support and the dedication of his followers to him has been not hugely diminished. Trump’s rallies, in particular, show an almost frightening intensity of the power of Trump’s charisma and influence over his followers.

For a core of his base Donald Trump provides them with many things, including permission to hate. It is a striking phenomenon. (emphasis mine)

In the three years since the 2016 election, I have become more and more convinced that hate is at the very core of the Trump base–that his appeal is primarily, if not exclusively, to White Christian heterosexuals, male or female, who believe that White Christian heterosexual men are supposed to dominate society and who see that rightful hegemony being eroded by black and brown people and uppity women.

They see their tribe being diminished, while “those people”–Jews, LGBTQ folks, Muslims, African-Americans–are demanding and receiving a place at the civic table, and they are enraged. Social conventions that have prevented them from expressing that hostility (conventions they sneer at as “political correctness”) infuriate them further.

And along comes Trump, who says: it’s okay to hate those “others.”

It reflects Trump’s crying out to his crowd at his rallies and granting them permission when he says things like, “Hey, you want to smash this guy in the face, don’t you? And I’ll pay all legal costs.” The Charlottesville hate riot was another interesting example of how Trump has positioned himself vis-à-vis the far right. Trump finds a resonance with them. He stimulates the crowd with chants such as “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall!”  These all become powerful incentives for his followers to move to the extremes. It’s almost as if Donald Trump is inciting these feelings. Donald Trump is connecting to feelings in his crowd — feelings that he is stimulating…The danger is that such feelings, which are usually beneath the surface, are now being stimulated by Donald Trump.

There was a good deal more in the interview, and it was enlightening, but to me, it was the “permission to hate”analysis that most rang true.

I never doubted that there were people like Trump’s base in the U.S. But in my darkest times, I never thought there were so many of them.

The 2020 election will tell us whether ours is a country where most citizens believe in working toward a society of civic equals, or a country in which a majority of our neighbors were just waiting for someone who would give them permission to hate.

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If This Is True…

When I was much younger, I naively believed that endemic corruption was only a problem in other countries–that America would of course have its share of slimy folks, but their influence would be episodic, not part of the culture.

My experience with Indianapolis’ municipal government was consistent with that conviction.

I began to question whether I could generalize that experience when–as a lawyer in private practice–I represented real estate developers and had occasion to interact with lenders from states like New Jersey, where I was astonished to discover it could take a couple of years and some dubious “arrangements” to get a building permit. (At the time, you could pull such a permit in Indianapolis in a day or two.)

These days, watching the Trump Administration is a Master Class in sleaze. As we learn more about the backgrounds of the people Trump has installed in cabinet and White House positions, it becomes more and more apparent that they aren’t new to corruption and self-dealing (just google “best people” sometime…). Presumably, that’s why Trump feels comfortable with them–they are “his kind of people.”

Then there’s Rudy Guiliani. It appears that Trump’s “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” relationship with his “personal lawyer” goes back some years as well–at least to 1988. According to Daily Kos,

U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani had FBI Agent Tony Lombardi end the FBI’s investigation on Trump money laundering.  A few weeks later, Donald Trump raised $2 Million for Giuliani’s mayoral campaign.  Quid Pro Quo?

Now, Daily Kos is not an unbiased news source. It definitely leans Left. But its political preferences tend to dictate what it chooses to report, and how it reacts to actual “facts on the ground.” To the best of my ability to tell, it doesn’t engage in Fox-like distortion/invention.

Here are relevant portions of the rest of the post:

Journalist, and author, Wayne Barrett writes in his 2016 article:

Tony Lombardi, the federal agent closest to then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, opened a probe of Trump’s role in the suspect sale of two Trump Tower apartments to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of the city’s largest gambling ring.

Barrett explains:

The government subsequently nailed Hopkins’ mortgage broker, Frank LaMagra, on an unrelated charge and he offered to give up Donald, claiming Trump “participated” in the money-laundering — and volunteering to wear a wire on him….

Lombardi, who discussed the case with Giuliani personally (and with me for a 1993 Village Voice piece called “The Case of the Missing Case”), went straight to Donald for two hour-long interviews with him. Within weeks of the interviews, Donald announced he’d raise $2 million in a half hour if Rudy ran for mayor. LaMagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment, where he was arrested.

Lombardi — who expected a top appointment in a Giuliani mayoralty, conducted several other probes directly tied to Giuliani political opponents, and testified later that “every day I came to work I went to Mr. Giuliani to seek out what duties I needed to perform” — closed the Trump investigation without even giving it a case number. That meant that New Jersey gaming authorities would never know it existed.

I guess the old adage “it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know” was certainly true in New York’s white-collar crime community.

This was 1988. More evidence, as if we needed it, that Guiliani was never entitled to be called “America’s Mayor,” that Trump’s venality is nothing new, and that my naiveté was just that.

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Pardons And Predatory Loans–A Day In Trumpland

Like a broken record, I keep coming back to one question: what can his supporters be thinking? 

In just one November week, the President of the United States pardoned three war criminals and endorsed a measure facilitating predatory payday loans. A report in Talking Points Memo has details of both.

President Trump’s pardons: “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio. Michael Behenna. And this week, three convicted or accused murderers: Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, both of whom Trump pardoned, and Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who Trump granted clemency.

Gallagher, the best-known of the trio, was acquitted of charges that he murdered an teenage Islamic State captive. But he was convicted of posing with the boy’s body. And his own SEALs testified against him, including SEAL Dylan Dille, who testified that he witnessed Gallagher shoot innocent people with a sniper rifle. Another SEAL under Gallagher’s charge testified, “I shot more warning shots to save civilians from Eddie than I ever did at ISIS.”

 “I stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state,” Trump said Tuesday. In this case, that apparently means the Defense secretary, the (fired) Navy secretary and military prosecutors.

If Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, who was forced out over his strong denunciation of the pardons, is a member of the “deep state,” then we need more deep state operatives.

In his letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Spencer criticized Trump for interfering on Gallagher’s behalf.

“…I no longer share the same understanding as the Commander in Chief who appointed me, in regards to the key principle of good order and discipline,” he wrote. “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Among the multitude of concepts that elude our Moron In Chief is the fact that his pardons endanger American troops. If we do not obey the rules of “good order and discipline,” our antagonists will feel no compunction to treat American prisoners humanely. You can visit Lawfare for a perceptive discussion of the other damage these pardons do.

Allowing lenders to profit from imposing outrageous interest rates on those least able to pay them may not be as monumentally evil as encouraging war crimes, but it is appalling nonetheless.

Want to make payday loans in states where it’s outlawed? Rent a bank! Laws governing interest rates on predatory loans vary widely from state to state. Predatory lenders hate that. They want to be able to charge 120% APR in Colorado just like they do in, say, Wisconsin. How do they do that now? They use the bank in Wisconsin to process a high-interest loan that, in all other respects, was effectively carried out through a storefront in Denver. Yes, this really happened, and yes, the Trump administration has taken the banks’ side in the ongoing legal battle.

A 2015 court decision has hampered this effort somewhat for predatory lenders, but the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency want to change that, announcing a proposal that would actively promote the practice.

FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams “is doing the bidding of loan sharks who have a decades-long history of trying to get around state consumer protection rules,” Americans for Financial Reform spokesperson Carter Dougherty observed. “And now a federal regulator is helping them do it.”

These two actions weren’t the only measures the administration took that week to unravel safeguards and undermine the rule of law, but even if they were–even if they stood alone–how do Trump’s supporters defend them? What sort of people continue to wear their MAGA hats, and proclaim that Trump was “chosen by God” and “a better President than Lincoln?”

The only answer I can come up with is: people who believe in a God who wants White Christian men to dominate others, and people who still resent Lincoln for freeing the slaves. (They were, after all, black people.)

I always knew there were some people who held these views. What is heartbreaking is that there are so many of them.

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A Short Post For A Long Day

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but it tends to be a long day–both for those of us having family over, and for people traveling across town or across country to be with  family and friends.

What I love about Thanksgiving–aside from having my nuclear and extended family around the table–is that it requires us to focus on how fortunate most of us are. And we are fortunate. No one’s life is perfect, but whatever deficits we’ve racked up, in my family we have our health, food to eat, homes to sleep in, supportive friends and people to love. So it’s good.

When we look beyond our personal situations, of course, it’s a different story.

It’s one thing to recognize my own blessings; it’s another to look at a world in which unrest and White Nationalism are growing, or to follow reports of  the daily damage that Trump is inflicting on America.  I worry constantly about the social, economic and environmental challenges my grandchildren will face.

If we work hard and are very lucky, next Thanksgiving we will be grateful for the electoral defeat of Trumpworld– grateful for confirmation that good Americans outnumber the racists in his cult. (If we aren’t lucky, we can kiss the America I’ve believed in goodbye.) We shall see what the next year brings.

In the meantime, let me share some things for which I am immensely grateful:

  • The readers of this blog, including but absolutely not limited to those who take the time and trouble to comment. It really helps to know that others share my angst.
  • The fact that no one who will be at my Thanksgiving table is a Trump supporter–or even close. (I told you I have a wonderful family.)
  • For my awesome students, who constantly demonstrate inclusiveness and concern for community and fundamental fairness–I’d turn the country over to them right now.
  • And for a husband and family who put up with me….

To all of you: happy turkey day. We can return to the disaster that is our federal government tomorrow.

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