I woke up this morning to see that Donald Trump had tweeted again, but this time his message was unobjectionable.
I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2017
On International Women's Day, join me in honoring the critical role of women here in America & around the world.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2017
But the next thing I saw was that the Trump Organization had just had a bunch of trademarks green-lighted by the Chinese government. In fact, a suspiciously high 38 trademarks were granted, including ones for Trump-brand massage parlors and escort services.
China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for President Donald Trump and his family to develop a host of branded businesses from hotels to insurance to bodyguard and escort services, public documents show.
Trump’s lawyers in China applied for the marks in April 2016, as Trump railed against China at campaign rallies, accusing it of currency manipulation and stealing U.S. jobs. Critics maintain that Trump’s swelling portfolio of China trademarks raises serious conflict of interest questions.
I guess you can have a little extra confidence when your escort is a Trump-brand escort, and you can be sure that Trump-brand massages come with a happy ending.
But is this really consistent with the message that Trump tried to convey this morning? “I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy.”
I’m just trying to envision the Republican reaction to President Bill Clinton getting Chinese trademarks to brand his name to escort services and massage parlors.
Naturally, there’s a larger issue here that isn’t dependent on our prurient interest.
Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the volume of new approvals raised red flags.
“A routine trademark, patent or copyright from a foreign government is likely not an unconstitutional emolument, but with so many trademarks being granted over such a short time period, the question arises as to whether there is an accommodation in at least some of them,” he said.
Painter is involved in a lawsuit alleging that Trump’s foreign business ties violate the U.S. Constitution. Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as “totally without merit.”
I imagine that, however important it may be, the average Joe isn’t much interested in the Emoluments Clause to the Constitution, even if the evidence keeps piling up that Trump is committing impeachable offenses related to it.
Of course, in my opinion, the public never really cared much about sketchy Chinese fundraising during the Clinton administration, but they perked up and paid attention when Kenneth Starr started talking about sex. Maybe that’s just human nature, but that’s also why Trump-branded escort services and massage parlors are more likely to cause a stir than the larger issue of foreign countries, including China, giving Trump’s business preferential treatment. The former may be tawdry and beneath the dignity of an American president, but it’s the latter that was banned by the Founding Fathers.
In any case, Trump has a funny way of showing his tremendous respect for women, and we can see which vital roles he thinks they fulfill in “the fabric of our society and our economy.”
Echoes of Newt selling “awards” to a Texas massage parlor for $5,000 or something.
None of this goes anywhere. Trump supporters (meaning, voters), enablers (Ryan etc.) and minions (Bannon, Conway) have collaborated on a wall around this, and it’s gone. No-one will ever drop support for Trump because they’re “offended” by anything he does in any conventional sense — whether it’s morality, dishonesty, offensive views, ignorance, or general uncouthness or barbarity. We can all just kiss that idea goodbye.
Part of the problem is the standard “liberals are hypocrites” line: it’s bad when a liberal acts selfishly or dishonestly because we parade ourselves as paragons of virtue (“Social Justice Warriors” etc.), so you can always catch a Clinton or a Kennedy in a moment of hypocrisy, whereas conservatives never claimed to stand for anything except profit and “winning,” so they’re off the hook.
And a second, important element is our noxious, corrosive “cowboy” mythology (blatantly exploited by Reagan and Bush II), which holds that “experts” and “the elite” are ultimately inferior to a salt-of-the-earth clodhopper in a bolo tie when you want to “get things done.”
But the biggesst issue is more systemic and existential: Trump was selected because of a nihilistic desperation (as others have chronicled in great detail) — his supporters are tired of the “high standards” and protocols of government because they never seem to get anything out of it. So a cretin like Trump is perfect — he’s the “antidote” not just to “political correctness” (meaning, a coherent, civilized value system) but to Washington in general.
So we can forget the whole “look how bad Trump is” line of argument. It goes nowhere. (Even impeachment or criminal investigation will be seen as an ennobling “rejection” by the “Washington establishment.”) The only way the needle moves is if people start personally feeling like they’ve been conned in terms of jobs, walls, health care, wars or taxes.
I’m getting very tired of the predictable reaction to anything I write that none of it will impress Trump’s voters.
Is the reaction ‘none of it will impress Trump’s voters’ or ‘none of it has the potential to change the political dynamic?’
What positive steps can the left and the Democratic party take that don’t reply on the futile attempt to ‘impress Trump voters?’
Also, OT, but I’d love to read a long piece about your current analysis of your Obama-years analysis.
Respectfully, I don’t think that’s fair at all.
You said “consistent with the message”; “Republican reaction”; “the average Joe isn’t much interested”; “the public […] perked up” etc. The entire armature of this post is about determining if support for Trump will weaken.
And I was very careful to parse out which kinds of support I was discussing (voters; congressional leaders; party operatives/Executive branch officials). In other words, I was avoiding exactly the “Trump voters are implacable idiots” sentiment you’re accusing me of: I wasn’t just saying “these are stupid people”; when it came to the voters I went into detail about the reasonable basis for their priorities.
I don’t think it’s a reflection on what you say, so much as an acknowledgement of the pandemic of nihilism within the republican party and rural America. The worse he is proven to be, the more they are convinced that everything is a conspiracy against him, and by proxy THEM.
I think those tidbits you point out will have a mildly corrosive effect on the support of moral conservatives who aren’t hypocrites, the McMullin types, etc– but the base will never be dissuaded or broken apart. It’s a coalition of the paranoid. Hopefully the disclosures motivate the apolitical or apathetic. That’s where the power potential is.
It just becomes its own form of nihilism. Nothing matters unless it can magically make the scales fall from the eyes of Trump voters, and all Trump voters are the same.
My analysis of the presidential election is that it turned on white rural voters who voted for Obama turning away from Clinton in a way that amounts to communal cultural rejection of the Democratic Party.
Extremely dangerous stuff, no doubt.
But these are still Obama voters.
If it represents in some ways a kid of desperation, a rolling of the dice despite serious reservations, then those folks will look for results and reassess.
It’s a mistake to treat them all as unreachable racists who are immune to reason.
Plesae see my comment below. I didn’t say any of that stuff — I went out of my way to carefully avoid it.
“None of this goes anywhere.”
“No-one will ever drop support for Trump because they’re “offended” by anything he does in any conventional sense…”
“his supporters are tired of the “high standards” and protocols of government because they never seem to get anything out of it. So a cretin like Trump is perfect…”
I’m reacting to the implicit nihilism in those statements. I stand by my characterization of them.
Let me try to clarify the distinction I’m drawing.
Reacting to every bad Trump event (or, every Trump event) with an automatic “his stupid supporters won’t care” (so, implicitly, there’s nothing to be done) is — I agree — annoying, repetitive and nihilistic.
But parsing out what does make a difference (what can weaken or unseat him, in other words) involves going beyond that simple defeatism to look at why those supporters are so intractable: rather than calling them “stupid” (which simply means, succeptible to coarse persuasion), I’m saying that they’re engaged in a bargain with themselves where they will overlook their objections because of a more important set of goals. It’s not “Burn Down the Mission” nihilism so much as it’s a frustrated desire to throw away the whole game board and use a new one. (A similar thing happened when Obama ran the first time — Bush was so bad that people who ordinarily wouldn’t dream of voting for a black man or a democrat went ahead and did it — and many of those same “reset the system” voters chose Trump over Hillary.)
But that new game board has to pay off, for them: they have to get their healthcare and their “winning” and their jobs and their security, or they’ll quickly turn on him.
So I don’t think various examples of “Look how awful Trump is!” will ever work. (As I’m saying, they don’t care — they already crossed that bridge.) I think what will work is, “Look at how you’re not getting what he promised you.” Once the supporters (and Paul Ryan etc.) join the ranks of the thousands — millions? — of Trump customers over the decades who realize they’ve been conned by a smooth-talker, then and only then will he finally be in serious trouble. But constantly pointing out what a jerk he is just plays into the “cowboy” mythology he’s carefully cultivated, so it, as I said, “goes nowhere.”
If we’re talking former Obama voters who turned to SCROTUS in desperation, perhaps the specter of human trafficking would be something that would raise red flags. The base? Meh.
it turned on white rural voters who voted for Obama turning away from Clinton in a way that amounts to communal cultural rejection of the Democratic Party.
So were they disillusioned by the Obama years, thinking nothing good happened for them, or were they so turned off by Hillary that they voted Trump?
If the former, all that proves is that republican sabotage worked and these people were too uninformed to realize it. If the latter– in that Hillary promised to be a direct continuation of Obama policies– we have a bigger problem with sexism than racism in America.
Explaining how republicans screw people involves some nuance. Breaking through to them is a trick for people who are taught that there are simple solutions for everything, and intelligence is something to be feared and hated.
Rural America’s only chance of prosperity is if they happen to have some fossil fuel to extract. The GOP will never spend tax dollars on anything to benefit them or anyone out side of the military. To break through requires a real plan to bring jobs and housing to rural America.
I think I just read in the WaPo that this isn’t what it seems — the escorts, etc. Someone had been using Trump name and logo for an escort business. They told them to cease and desist. And I guess they wanted to protect the “brand.” So now we’ll have the right saying we on the left jumped to conclusions about Trump, and doesn’t the left do that all the time, etc. Makes it easy to discount anything and everything we say about Trump.
The right will say that anyway. I wish we’d just double-down. The Republican President attended rape parties on Epstein’s jet, so it makes sense for a sex trafficking business to want to use his brand. They wouldn’t try to license ‘Staples.’
Trump doesn’t respect women. Actions speak louder than words.
Every day Trump and his Republican minions release new
information that seems explosive enough to blow up their support. Yet it seems to mostly outrage us, and doesn’t faze them at all. But the key is going to be a constant hammering against the things they say and do.
I think attacking on multiple fronts and really understanding what the Republicans are actually saying is important. It’s all in the framing. Health care isn’t about providing health care, it’s about redirecting tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy. Attack them on rushing their terrible insurance tax bill without providing what it will cost. Tell voters what they stand to lose.
Keep hammering away at the Russian connections, keep pushing for Trump to release his taxes as part of the investigation, keep after Jeff Sessions and every other rat who has been involved.
After all we’ve fought for, it would be crazy to just throw in the towel now. Put the real burden on the Trump people to own the messes they’re making. And don’t let your state representatives cave on any issues.
What can liberal/progressives/Democrats do? I think our chance of winning over any Trump voters is slim. However, we can energize phlegmatic Democratic and left leaning independents and unaffiliated voters. In my community I’ve seen people who’ve never before participated get active. We need lots more of this.
Definitely an uptick in activity in my little corner of the US. We may be deep red, but we have always had pockets of resistance. Next year could be a good one to stop the bleeding on the Democratic side as far as state legislature goes. If the national party is committing to a 50 state strategy, recruiting credible candidates in at least a couple of our urban or semi-urban districts would help on the Congressional side of the equation. At the moment, I am cautiously optimistic.
In contrast to Donald’s tweets, here is that “thug” and “dictator” Putin speaking to the nation on Int’l Women’s Day:
Russia Decriminalized Domestic Violence With Support from the Russian Orthodox Church
Bad link.
But I wasn’t posting to assert he’s perfect on women’s issues across the board, or several other mostly domestic ones, as with anti-gay measures for instance. But otherwise, afaik, women get full rights over there, including abortion. Does Ireland, for instance, still outlaw it?
Russia is a different country, more traditional values oriented w/n the context of that country. Not a carbon copy of the most liberal western democracies as with Scandinavia for instance.
But Russia does have a tradition of women playing major roles in all aspects of Russian society outside of the home, probably longer than our fairly recent trend post-feminist movement of the early 70s. First woman in space comes to mind. And she later became a member of the Duma.
This just happened last month.
fixed link
Everyone knows what your point is, I just have no idea why you’re carrying any water at all for a fascist unless you’re sympatico with the goal of ending NATO and the present world order by any means necessary, even for it to be rebuilt by fascists. Maddening.
Fascist is considerably over-demonizing the dude and devalues true fascism.
As for Nato, I’ve already clearly stated my view: it has no reason for being today, post-Soviet Union. If however we want to turn it to a much better use, something that would benefit all mankind and not just the US and its defense industry-IC complex, we should accept the request from Putin to bring it in as a full member and turn Nato’s mission into a combat-peace force — also, importantly, accepting military units from countries outside of Nato to make it a true multinational alliance — to take out ISIS/AQ. If not, Nato should be disbanded. It’s more a threat to world stability right now than anything given its recent aggressive posture.
Do you really like the “present world order”? Russia deeming Nato/US actions in recent years as provocative and a direct threat to their national security? Russia reacting, in part, by quietly making a military alliance w/China, in addition to ramping up and vastly improving its overall military situation, especially in high-tech weapons areas.
We’re working ourselves into a hot war real possibility w/ Russia, given the trendline. Seems like the present world order needs some radical reform, if short of “by any means necessary.” There is still time, I hope, for sanity to prevail and diplomatic deals to be made. But if we don’t act wisely and pull back from the anti-Russian hysteria here, well, there will more likely than not be severe consequences for our world’s policeman posture.
What we send out into the world will eventually come back at us, and in the current context, in not very desirable ways …