Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Sunday, July 28, 2019
This Day In History, 1929: Jacqueline Bouvier Is Born
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was born 90 years ago this weekend: pic.twitter.com/XqPrMErege— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 27, 2019
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
This Day In History, 1969: Apollo 11 Returns
#OTD in 1969: The #Apollo11 astronauts returned to Earth and were recovered by the USS Hornet after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, successfully completing their return from the moon. Learn more about the #USNavy's role in the recovery operation - https://t.co/KAdQK9I9hB pic.twitter.com/4iiCXwani7— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) July 24, 2019
Five years later, the final act of Richard Nixon's presidency began to play out:
Supreme Court, 8-0 (with William Rehnquist recusing himself) , ordered Richard Nixon to surrender Watergate tapes 45 years ago tomorrow: pic.twitter.com/49kMeLBFnH— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 23, 2019
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Mittens Gets Ratioed - Updated
The chants at last night’s rally were offensive, and I’m glad the President has disavowed them.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 18, 2019
For a brief moment I thought this was a parody of Mitt's wooden, sometimes clueless style, but it's his verified Twitter account.
To be clear, my issue with this tweet is that I don't for a moment believe that Donald was sincere in his disavowal of the chants, and I'd be willing to bet that deep in his heart Mitt doesn't believe it either. Why is he pretending he does? Is he that desperate to curry favor with Donald and his racist supporters?
Updated on Friday morning. Laurence Tribe has similar thoughts:
Pathetic. It was as fake a disavowel as I’ve ever heard. And it was part of Trump’s lie about how he responded to the chants in the first place. @MittRomney is just another tool. Such a disappointment. https://t.co/moBNpQi16l— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 19, 2019
Update #2. Stuart Stevens was the Romney campaign's top strategist during Mitt's 2012 run for president.
There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind his staff started it. you can hear it start with a bunch of loud young guys. and then the crowd at large started in. it was like the "applause" at his CIA Memorial wall speech.— shippy (@Icky_Mettle) July 18, 2019
This Day In History, 1969: "In Event Of Moon Disaster" And A Disaster On Earth - Updated
Fifty years ago, on July 18, 1969, Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon. The hope and the prayer was that everything would go exactly as planned, but what if it didn't? As outlined in a Washington Post story written by author James Mann and published six days ago, there was a contingency plan:
America’s landing on the moon stands as such a stunning success that, 50 years later, we have trouble imagining it could have gone terribly, tragically wrong.
But in the days before the landing, on July 20, 1969, there were acute fears of a mishap. Officials in the White House and at NASA laid out lugubrious contingency plans in case astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, but then were unable to get off the surface and back to the space capsule. If that had happened, they would have been doomed to die there, either by slow asphyxiation or perhaps by suicide.
The White House chief of staff instructed William Safire, then a White House speechwriter (and later a New York Times columnist), to draft a remarkable speech for President Richard Nixon to deliver to the nation if the astronauts were stranded on the moon. Along with the speech, Safire included instructions for other actions that should be taken. In particular, he wrote, Nixon should telephone the wives of the astronauts, whom he chillingly referred to as the “widows-to-be.” At a certain point, NASA would “end communications” with the astronauts, Safire wrote, and a clergyman should then conduct the equivalent of a burial at sea, ending with the Lord’s Prayer.
Safire’s undelivered speech lay hidden for nearly three decades before I found it. In the late 1990s, researching a book on America’s opening to China, I was rummaging through the archives of the Nixon administration (then in College Park, Md.) when my eyes suddenly fell on something I wasn’t looking for. It was a memo from Safire to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman titled, “In event of moon disaster.”
The short text still brings tears to the eyes. It begins, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” It ends with the words, “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
What Safire wrote would have qualified as the most eloquent speech Nixon ever gave — and one of the most poignant by any American president. Thankfully, it never had to be delivered. (This is the article in its entirety.)
Safire typed the speech into a memo, dated July 18, 1969, and sent it to White House Chief of Staff H.R Haldeman:
Click here to see a larger copy of the speech.
Apollo 11 turned out to be a triumph, of course, truly a giant leap for mankind. Back here on earth a much less elevated narrative was also taking place, starting the night of July 18:
Fifty years ago, as men prepared to land on the moon and millions of those stuck on earth followed each staticky dispatch from space, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car into a pond. The weekend of the Apollo 11 moon landing should have cemented the Kennedy family’s legacy of public service. Seven years earlier, Teddy’s brother President John F. Kennedy proposed putting an American on the lunar surface before the decade was out. And on the evening of July 18, 1969, Neil Armstrong was hours away from doing just that. But for the new patriarch of Camelot, the weekend instead was marked by a tragic accident at best, an unconscionable act at worst—one that ultimately killed a young woman, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.
Looking back 50 years on, Chappaquiddick says much about its era, a time when a privileged, powerful man could manipulate a system to avoid prosecution while a young woman who had ascended in male-dominated Washington—when only 11 women were in Congress—had both her life and death engulfed by the senator’s political ambitions and America’s fascination with the Kennedys.
... In the accident’s aftermath, Kennedy deftly managed to escape both his Oldsmobile Delmont 88 and the incident itself with little punishment. Numerous books, documentaries, and movies have been released over the years, including the full-length feature Chappaquiddick, in 2017, often meticulously focusing on the hours after the accident and those involved. But the people with firsthand knowledge of Chappaquiddick have rarely spoken. And even today, the truth still feels just out of reach. (From Vanity Fair, read more here.)
On the other hand, what if Chappaquiddick had never happened? Would Ted Kennedy have been able to connect himself to his older brother's historic vision, share in the triumph of the successful moon landing and ride that wave to the presidency? Maybe, but call me skeptical.
And one more thing. On a different July 18, 43 years later, Donald sent out the following tweet:
Update on Saturday morning. How cool is this:
America’s landing on the moon stands as such a stunning success that, 50 years later, we have trouble imagining it could have gone terribly, tragically wrong.
But in the days before the landing, on July 20, 1969, there were acute fears of a mishap. Officials in the White House and at NASA laid out lugubrious contingency plans in case astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, but then were unable to get off the surface and back to the space capsule. If that had happened, they would have been doomed to die there, either by slow asphyxiation or perhaps by suicide.
The White House chief of staff instructed William Safire, then a White House speechwriter (and later a New York Times columnist), to draft a remarkable speech for President Richard Nixon to deliver to the nation if the astronauts were stranded on the moon. Along with the speech, Safire included instructions for other actions that should be taken. In particular, he wrote, Nixon should telephone the wives of the astronauts, whom he chillingly referred to as the “widows-to-be.” At a certain point, NASA would “end communications” with the astronauts, Safire wrote, and a clergyman should then conduct the equivalent of a burial at sea, ending with the Lord’s Prayer.
Safire’s undelivered speech lay hidden for nearly three decades before I found it. In the late 1990s, researching a book on America’s opening to China, I was rummaging through the archives of the Nixon administration (then in College Park, Md.) when my eyes suddenly fell on something I wasn’t looking for. It was a memo from Safire to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman titled, “In event of moon disaster.”
The short text still brings tears to the eyes. It begins, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” It ends with the words, “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
What Safire wrote would have qualified as the most eloquent speech Nixon ever gave — and one of the most poignant by any American president. Thankfully, it never had to be delivered. (This is the article in its entirety.)
Safire typed the speech into a memo, dated July 18, 1969, and sent it to White House Chief of Staff H.R Haldeman:
Click here to see a larger copy of the speech.
Apollo 11 turned out to be a triumph, of course, truly a giant leap for mankind. Back here on earth a much less elevated narrative was also taking place, starting the night of July 18:
Fifty years ago, as men prepared to land on the moon and millions of those stuck on earth followed each staticky dispatch from space, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car into a pond. The weekend of the Apollo 11 moon landing should have cemented the Kennedy family’s legacy of public service. Seven years earlier, Teddy’s brother President John F. Kennedy proposed putting an American on the lunar surface before the decade was out. And on the evening of July 18, 1969, Neil Armstrong was hours away from doing just that. But for the new patriarch of Camelot, the weekend instead was marked by a tragic accident at best, an unconscionable act at worst—one that ultimately killed a young woman, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.
Looking back 50 years on, Chappaquiddick says much about its era, a time when a privileged, powerful man could manipulate a system to avoid prosecution while a young woman who had ascended in male-dominated Washington—when only 11 women were in Congress—had both her life and death engulfed by the senator’s political ambitions and America’s fascination with the Kennedys.
In the short term the incident at Chappaquiddick was overshadowed by the moon landing but it was still a big deal. Would it have gotten more attention at the time if it hadn't happened while Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon? Probably. (To put it another way, did Ted "luck out" with the timing of his plunge into the pond? My understanding is that non-admirers of the Kennedys have occasionally voiced this thought.) Would the outcome have been different in any way, specifically in terms of consequences for Ted Kennedy, if the timing had been different? Probably not.
For what it's worth, and I'm by no means an expert on Chappaquiddick and we'll never know for sure, but I believe the reason Ted Kennedy waited so long to call the police is that he was drunk that night. He wanted to sober up before putting himself in contact with the authorities. I believe his various advisers were telling him that "Yes, this looks bad but a DUI conviction would be worse. Much better to wait a few hours until your blood alcohol level has gone down. That way they'll never be able to say for sure that you were driving drunk."
For what it's worth, and I'm by no means an expert on Chappaquiddick and we'll never know for sure, but I believe the reason Ted Kennedy waited so long to call the police is that he was drunk that night. He wanted to sober up before putting himself in contact with the authorities. I believe his various advisers were telling him that "Yes, this looks bad but a DUI conviction would be worse. Much better to wait a few hours until your blood alcohol level has gone down. That way they'll never be able to say for sure that you were driving drunk."
On the other hand, what if Chappaquiddick had never happened? Would Ted Kennedy have been able to connect himself to his older brother's historic vision, share in the triumph of the successful moon landing and ride that wave to the presidency? Maybe, but call me skeptical.
In reality, Chappaquiddick did happen, the same week as the moon landing. In the short term Kennedy avoided serious consequences but in the long term he was never able to completely escape the shadow of his behavior and choices during that time. It's not the only reason he never got to be president but it's certainly a stain on his reputation, even now.
And one more thing. On a different July 18, 43 years later, Donald sent out the following tweet:
As I always said, the "Birthers" were after the truth. Thanks to @RealSheriffJoe @BarackObama can't hide anymore.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2012
Update on Saturday morning. How cool is this:
Here’s the cover and opening pages of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1986 future-telling book July 20, 2019. Published 17 years after the moon landing, it predicts what the world will look like on the event’s 50th anniversary.— 70s Sci-Fi Art (@70sscifiart) July 20, 2019
From the Kirkus review:
“Clarke invo… https://t.co/PMQKLpT3H2 pic.twitter.com/P84JjP2f2w
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
When AJ Met Jason... Episode 12: They're Back - Updated
Do you remember AJ Delgado and Jason Miller, the Trump campaign staffers who had an affair? Between August 10, 2017 and November 14, 2018, I wrote eleven posts in which I chronicled the depressingly sordid mess that resulted from that little fling between a married boss and his subordinate. (Click here to read them; for a full understanding of how this has played out, scroll to the end and start with episode 1, then read up.)
The story disappeared after my last post in November; at the time my best guess was that AJ and Jason had reached some kind of custody/child support agreement that included a strict "no trashing each other on Twitter (or anywhere else)" clause.
Jason was in the news briefly in June when he went off on Representative Jerry Nadler:
... which caused him to be fired, or, excuse me, to mutually part ways from his employer and his $500,000 annual salary:
Jason Miller, a former top campaign aide and close adviser to Donald Trump, has left his job as a managing director at Teneo, a prominent consulting firm, days after launching a profanity-laced tirade directed at a top House Democrat.
“I have parted ways with Teneo by mutual consent and look forward to formally announcing my next move in the coming weeks,” Miller said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Teneo is an incredible firm and without a doubt the premier CEO consultancy on the planet. They have always been great to me and I’m proud to have called them teammates for the past two and a half years.” (From a story at the Daily Beast, read it here.)
Then, yesterday, Jason Miller had a very bad day:
Twitter, of course, went nuts:
This is how the Miami Herald is covering the story, in an article posted this afternoon:
In a deposition for his libel suit over stories he claimed ruined his reputation, former Donald Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller admitted his extramarital activities included massage parlor masturbation in New York, Washington or Miami.
The deposition’s transcript is on the Miami federal court docket for Miller vs. Gizmodo Media Group, the owners of Splinter.com. Miller claims Splinter.com published allegations from a sealed Miami-Dade family court filing that qualify as libelous. The suit calls the Sept. 21, 2018 story, which accuses Miller of giving a mistress an “abortion pill,” part of a plot to destroy by A.J. Delgado, who had a son by Miller in July 2017.
Rumors of the affair with Delgado, a transition adviser, prompted Miller’s resignation in December 2016 two days after President Trump announced Miller would be his communications director.
On May 30, Miller was deposed by Gizmodo attorney Katherine Bolger of Davis Wright Tremaine law firm. The transcript of the deposition was first obtained by mediaite.com.
The subject turned to Miller’s infidelities.
Miller admitted, “There were other indiscretions that I’ve had” beyond his affairs with Delgado and the other woman.
When Bolger asked him to be more specific, Miller said, “On several occasions I’ve gone to a massage parlor.”
Miller admitted to going to Asian-themed places in New York, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and, one, in Miami. He couldn’t name names as far as establishments. He put his total visits at “five or six” times.
Bolger said “I assume when you use the word “massage parlor,” you refer to massage parlors that have some sexual component to them, right?”
Miller replied, “I’ve gotten a — a hand job at a massage parlor.”
“Okay. How many times?”
“Four or five.”
Miller said his sexual contact at the parlors were limited to manual stimulation. No such limits existed when he visited Washington, D.C. escorts in 2015 and 2017. (This is the article in its entirety; click here to read Miller's deposition.)
Yes, this is going to sound snarky, but I'm wondering how Mrs. Miller is feeling about her husband today.
Update on Thursday morning: AJ has deleted her Twitter account, and I admit I'm curious to know why. As I said above, I don't know for sure that there's a non-disparagement clause in whatever custody/support agreement they hammered out, but I'd say it's likely, and AJ may have gone too far with her tweets yesterday. (There were others that I didn't cut-and-paste into the blog, which are now sadly lost to history, unless she reinstates her account at some point in the future.) Did she get a stern warning from Jason's attorneys? Probably. As interested as I've been in watching this sad story play out in public, it's probably best for all concerned that neither AJ nor Jason is on Twitter anymore.
The story disappeared after my last post in November; at the time my best guess was that AJ and Jason had reached some kind of custody/child support agreement that included a strict "no trashing each other on Twitter (or anywhere else)" clause.
Jason was in the news briefly in June when he went off on Representative Jerry Nadler:
... which caused him to be fired, or, excuse me, to mutually part ways from his employer and his $500,000 annual salary:
Jason Miller, a former top campaign aide and close adviser to Donald Trump, has left his job as a managing director at Teneo, a prominent consulting firm, days after launching a profanity-laced tirade directed at a top House Democrat.
“I have parted ways with Teneo by mutual consent and look forward to formally announcing my next move in the coming weeks,” Miller said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Teneo is an incredible firm and without a doubt the premier CEO consultancy on the planet. They have always been great to me and I’m proud to have called them teammates for the past two and a half years.” (From a story at the Daily Beast, read it here.)
Jason also deleted his Twitter account.
Then, yesterday, Jason Miller had a very bad day:
SCOOP by me: fmr. Trump campaign communications boss Jason Miller admitted to hiring numerous prostitutes over a nearly 2 decade period in a recent deposition. he also had two affairs w/ subordinates on the Cruz & Trump campaign while his wife was pregnant https://t.co/Qx9g8ONzhW— Caleb Ecarma (@calebecarma) July 16, 2019
Twitter, of course, went nuts:
That rascal Jason Miller was a busy lad. And by "busy" I mean, ewwwwwwww. https://t.co/POBm15kjNk— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 16, 2019
On rereading this article about Trump advisor Jason Miller and his confessed history with prostitutes and rub-and-tug happy ending massage parlors, I wonder if he's not actually *trying* to get back in good with Trump. https://t.co/POBm15kjNk— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 16, 2019
man. jason miller had himself a time during the trump campaign and afterwards. and after that. https://t.co/LNV9TQOc9p pic.twitter.com/3BpbeIz4eq— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) July 16, 2019
sometimes lawsuits backfire against the plaintiffs https://t.co/LNkMjJCoEv— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) July 16, 2019
Jason Miller was the first scandal/firing of the Trump administration, the "love child" incident. https://t.co/Jq32nzRoKp— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) July 16, 2019
I'm old enough to remember when this—hell, any of this—would've been a big deal. https://t.co/zFHtlC3hY1— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) July 16, 2019
Miller’s previously undisclosed affair with Cruz campaign staffer Catherine Frazier...began at the WH Correspondent’s Dinner in 4/2016 & lasted until...late August of that year — all while his wife was pregnant with their 2nd child, who was born in 1/2017 https://t.co/SxoBy4qena— Brian Zook 🌊 🌊🦅🏈! (@anches) July 16, 2019
This is how the Miami Herald is covering the story, in an article posted this afternoon:
In a deposition for his libel suit over stories he claimed ruined his reputation, former Donald Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller admitted his extramarital activities included massage parlor masturbation in New York, Washington or Miami.
The deposition’s transcript is on the Miami federal court docket for Miller vs. Gizmodo Media Group, the owners of Splinter.com. Miller claims Splinter.com published allegations from a sealed Miami-Dade family court filing that qualify as libelous. The suit calls the Sept. 21, 2018 story, which accuses Miller of giving a mistress an “abortion pill,” part of a plot to destroy by A.J. Delgado, who had a son by Miller in July 2017.
Rumors of the affair with Delgado, a transition adviser, prompted Miller’s resignation in December 2016 two days after President Trump announced Miller would be his communications director.
On May 30, Miller was deposed by Gizmodo attorney Katherine Bolger of Davis Wright Tremaine law firm. The transcript of the deposition was first obtained by mediaite.com.
The subject turned to Miller’s infidelities.
Miller admitted, “There were other indiscretions that I’ve had” beyond his affairs with Delgado and the other woman.
When Bolger asked him to be more specific, Miller said, “On several occasions I’ve gone to a massage parlor.”
Miller admitted to going to Asian-themed places in New York, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and, one, in Miami. He couldn’t name names as far as establishments. He put his total visits at “five or six” times.
Bolger said “I assume when you use the word “massage parlor,” you refer to massage parlors that have some sexual component to them, right?”
Miller replied, “I’ve gotten a — a hand job at a massage parlor.”
“Okay. How many times?”
“Four or five.”
Miller said his sexual contact at the parlors were limited to manual stimulation. No such limits existed when he visited Washington, D.C. escorts in 2015 and 2017. (This is the article in its entirety; click here to read Miller's deposition.)
What does AJ have to say about all this? Given how bad, or to be more accurate, how much worse, it makes Jason look she's surprisingly restrained, which supports my belief that she's now contractually constrained from trashing him by name: (Note added Thursday morning: As I said in the update below, AJ has now deleted her Twitter account. That's why her tweets don't look like tweets anymore.)
Wondering which one of his friends will desperately attempt damage control: @pagesix?— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Or the ever-dedicated @swin24 , who tries so so hard to help him?
Or @DailyMail ?
It’s a toss up. Maybe all three.
This guy, @willsommer , writes specifically about conservative folks in media. Even called my cell phone once while I’m at park w my son, bothering me for comment about Gizmodo lawsuit.— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Now that M’s prostitutes and hand jobs emerge? Suddenly silent/ignoring it. Weird! 😏
hi @willsommer @Swin24: Not fun when the "any comment?" tables are turned on the media, is it? Waiting for YOUR comment. After all, you both breathlessly reported false & cruel things about me in relation to the Gizmodo suit, yet now you're SUDDENLY not interested in covering it?— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Also, now that we know (established in the deposition) that a certain *someone* hires a "PR" person to plant hit pieces on me, next time you see a hit-piece on me, you'll know who exactly in media 'takes orders' and/or who is paid to do certain reports.— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Hi @brianstelter , you’re a media expert. Maybe you have some thoughts? https://t.co/SAih4pfZ5W— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
People think I was exaggerating with the media's "We only want to focus on the Hispanic chick" angle but, no, really, I'm not.— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
The woman's name is Catherine Frazier. Why is it not included but only mine is? https://t.co/vOt6T3W3Bs
You guyz. @DailyBeast's @swin24 's speciality is the Miller beat (well, the 'put stuff out there that Miller wants out there' beat). Swin, why so silent now? Miller's own depo in the lawsuit you've breathlessly covered isn't reported on? Weird. pic.twitter.com/8rB6phnlMz— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Has anyone checked if @Swin24 (aka, Miller's go-to guy) is OK? We know he was SO interested in the Gizmodo lawsuit but suddenly, conveniently seems to have lost interest in reporting on it. https://t.co/l647otVtVe— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 17, 2019
Yes, this is going to sound snarky, but I'm wondering how Mrs. Miller is feeling about her husband today.
Update on Thursday morning: AJ has deleted her Twitter account, and I admit I'm curious to know why. As I said above, I don't know for sure that there's a non-disparagement clause in whatever custody/support agreement they hammered out, but I'd say it's likely, and AJ may have gone too far with her tweets yesterday. (There were others that I didn't cut-and-paste into the blog, which are now sadly lost to history, unless she reinstates her account at some point in the future.) Did she get a stern warning from Jason's attorneys? Probably. As interested as I've been in watching this sad story play out in public, it's probably best for all concerned that neither AJ nor Jason is on Twitter anymore.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
This Day In History, 1969: Apollo 11 Blasts Off For The Moom
Good morning! Ready to go to the Moon... but first, breakfast. 🍳 🍞 ☕ #OTD 50 years ago, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin enjoyed a pre-launch meal at @NASAKennedy before suiting up for the mission. Liftoff was at 9:32 am EDT. #Apollo50th pic.twitter.com/MM3ycSt7p5— NASA (@NASA) July 16, 2019
🇺🇸On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11, carrying Americans Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins & Buzz Aldrin, blasted off from Cape Kennedy, beginning the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon pic.twitter.com/YI4ZpFwRhT— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) July 16, 2019
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Remember This Name: Jeffrey Epstein - Updated
A multimillionaire named Jeffrey Epstein was taken into custody by federal authorities overnight, a story that might become a very big deal indeed. Epstein has been notorious, if somewhat under the pop culture radar, for years, but it looks like he's about to get a lot more famous, and not in a good way. He also has a tribe of famous friends who may be feeling some unease this morning, including Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and, wait for it, the current president of the United States. ("[Epstein] likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Thus sayeth Donald Trump, quoted in an October 28, 2002 story at New York magazine, read it here.) The current Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, could also possibly be impacted by all this; here's how the Washington Post is reporting the story right now:
Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected multimillionaire who was sentenced to just more than a year in jail to resolve allegations that he molested dozens of young girls, has been taken into custody in New York on new charges having to do with sex crimes involving minors, a person familiar with the matter said.
The precise nature of the charges — and how they differ from the previous allegations to which Epstein, now 66, pleaded guilty in 2008 — could not immediately be learned. Epstein attorney Martin Weinberg did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where Epstein is expected to appear in federal court this week, declined to comment.
The latest charges add a significant new wrinkle to the considerable political and legal saga surrounding Epstein. The wealthy financier — who counted among his friends President Trump and former president Bill Clinton — pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of soliciting prostitution in a controversial arrangement that allowed him to resolve far more serious federal allegations of molesting young girls.
His case was the subject of an investigation by the Miami Herald, which detailed how then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, now Trump’s labor secretary, shelved a 53-page federal indictment that could have put Epstein behind bars for life. The arrangement is now being investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is seeking to determine whether the attorneys involved committed “professional misconduct” in bringing about its close.
The person familiar with the matter said the new charges against Epstein are for conduct similar to those that brought about his plea deal. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the specific counts remain under seal.
Attorney Paul Cassell, who represents Epstein victims who argued in federal court that prosecutors broke the law by not informing them about the plea deal, said he was not informed about the arrest.
“If today’s report is true, it only proves that Epstein should have been charged by federal prosecutors 12 years ago in Florida,” Cassell said. “With his money, Epstein was able to buy more than a decade of delay in facing justice — but fortunately he wasn’t able to postpone justice forever.”
The Daily Beast first reported Epstein had been taken into custody.
Epstein’s victims and others had long raised concerns that he was treated too leniently because of his political connections, with much of their ire focused on Acosta. The former U.S. attorney has defended his handling of the case, saying at his March 2017 confirmation hearing for labor secretary that state prosecutors considered a charge that could have resulted in “zero jail time, zero registration as a sexual offender and zero restitution for the victims in this case.”
The arrangement that resulted in Epstein’s guilty plea, Acosta said, “guarantees that someone goes to jail, that guarantees that someone register generally and that guarantees other outcomes is a good thing.”
Notably, though, Epstein avoided federal charges entirely — until now — and his time in jail was limited, considering the allegations he faced. The Herald reported that he was allowed work release privileges, which let him leave jail six days a week for 12 hours a day to work in an office he had set up.
His obligations to register as a sex offender were also eased because when he pleaded guilty, the only minor he was convicted of soliciting was 16 years old at the time the offenses began. A federal investigation found scores of potential underage victims, including a 14-year-old girl who first flagged police.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who has questioned how the Justice Department handled Epstein’s case, said in a statement that Epstein “received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice.”
Sasse added: “Justice doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account. This billionaire can’t be let out just because he can cut a bail check. The Justice Department needs to see this through.”
Prosecutors could face significant challenges if the new case is premised on conduct that was covered as part of Epstein’s plea deal, no matter how unsavory it might be. But if investigators discovered wrongdoing they did not know about previously or that was not covered by the plea — even if it occurred years in the past — they would be allowed to bring new charges.
A person familiar with the matter said prosecutors do not have significant double jeopardy concerns or concerns about Epstein’s previous plea, meaning the charges probably involve new victims or new alleged wrongdoing. (This is the article in its entirety.)
Last November the Miami Herald published a three-part series about Epstein, starting with this:
I can only imagine how ugly this could get.
Update: Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who has been covering the Epstein story for years, had this to say on MSNBC this morning, as reported at Real Clear Politics:
Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who has done original reporting on details of the alleged sex trafficking crimes of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein for the past several years, joined MSNBC Sunday morning to discuss the evidence against Epstein and the "rogues gallery" of rich, powerful, and famous people who are suspected to have used his services. Epstein was arrested Saturday in New Jersey on sex trafficking charges.
"I've felt a lot of pressure," Brown said. "Needless to say, these are very powerful people and I think that they're sweating a little bit, especially today. We don't know how much, how deep this went, how far-reaching it went in government, but there have been a lot of names that I could see on these message pads [listing clients] on a regular basis as part of the evidence. These message pads where they would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, 'I'm at this hotel.' Why do you do that, unless you're expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel? So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We'll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names."
She said Epstein's relationship with fellow Palm Beach resident Donald Trump was "friendly." "They went to dinner parties at each other's houses, Trump was also on his plane. Probably not as much as a lot of other people because, you know, Trump had his own plane. But they had a lot of social relationships. And the other interesting thing is Trump had a modeling agency, and Epstein also had a stake in a modeling agency, which they suspect he used to bring in underage girls from overseas."
"There is a comment in one of the court files where Epstein is quoted as saying, 'I want to set up my modeling agency the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.' I don't know what that means, but it is curious he was trying to do something similar to Trump." Brown said.
President Trump has commented on the case:
(Note that this is an old 10-second clip of Donald talking to Sean Hannity, saying that Bill Clinton has a "lot of problems" with Epstein. Update on July 10: Vanity Fair says this conversation is from February, 2015: Perhaps the most revealing commentary Donald Trump has offered on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who pleaded not guilty this week to sex trafficking and conspiracy, occurred in late February 2015, onstage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump, then flirting with a presidential run, was fielding softballs from Fox News host Sean Hannity when a lightning round of questions turned to a favorite topic: Bill Clinton. “Nice guy, Trump said. “Got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added, seemingly veering off topic. “Lot of problems.” Read the article here.)
"I started this story before the #MeToo movement, before the Harvey Weinstein story broke," she said. "But I think the story and my journalism benefited from the #MeToo movement because we're at a point in our culture where we're giving these cases a lot more scrutiny. I also think the reason why this case has touched a lot more nerves than some of the others is that these cases involve vulnerable girls -- 13,14,15-year-old girls."
"There are a lot of powerful people --men and women, by the way-- who take advantage of poor vulnerable women, whether they are underage, or even women who are young and come to this country trying to make a life for themselves, and really it is up to authorities to nail these cases and start to go after them, but it has been spotty," she also said. (Click here to watch the video segment.)
And yes, there's (circa 2000) art, from Newsweek:
From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images) PHOTO BY DAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY IMAGES/GETTY
Update #2 on Monday morning. There's a lot being written about this story this morning, no surprise. Here's Trump biographer Timothy L. O'Brien, writing at Bloomberg, in an article titled "Epstein Arrest Is a Worry for Donald Trump." This is the article in its entirety:
At some point in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, Jeffrey Epstein, a prominent money manager who owns sprawling homes in Palm Beach, New York, the Virgin Islands and other locales, is likely to be charged as a sex trafficker and pedophile by federal prosecutors.
Epstein, who has been accused repeatedly over the years of manipulatingand molesting underage girls, was arrested at a New Jersey airport on Saturday, according to multiple media reports. The Daily Beast, which broke the news of Epstein’s arrest, said prosecutors will accuse the financier of luring minors and other women to his homes by offering cash for massages and then sexually molesting them.
In an interesting twist, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan has put its public corruption unit in charge of the Epstein case – not, as might be expected, its human-trafficking team (although the latter unit is being consulted reportedly). It’s likely, at least in part, that the case is being handled by corruption prosecutors because of a controversial and lenient plea deal struck between Epstein and federal law enforcement officials in Florida back in 2008. The financier was being investigated at the time for having sex with underage girls – many of them orphans or runaways – at his Palm Beach mansion.
The Justice Department said in February that it planned to investigate “allegations that Department attorneys may have committed professional misconduct in the manner in which the Epstein criminal matter was resolved” in Florida. Later that month, a federal judge ruled that the same group of attorneys broke the law by not telling Epstein’s victims that the plea deal existed. The Miami-based prosecutors had prepared a 53-page federal indictment against Epstein, but his deal allowed him to plead guilty only to a state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He served 13 months in a Palm Beach prison that allowed him to leave six days a week to work. The deal also granted immunity to any of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators, who otherwise might have been swept up in his abuses.
Alexander Acosta, who is now President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2008 and he supervised the group of lawyers that forged the Epstein deal. Members of Acosta’s team from that period have said that they lacked the evidence to prove Epstein had violated federal law and did as much as they could to see that justice was served. But Julie Brown, a Miami Herald reporter, publisheda series of stories last fall that raised questions about Acosta’s independence and prompted the new federal probes of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami.
Brown’s stories took note of the extensive network of political, business and legal allies assembled by Epstein over the years and questioned the extent to which that network may have protected him or helped cushion his fall. It included: A former president, Bill Clinton; the U.K.’s Prince Andrew; powerhouse attorneys such as Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr, and Roy Black; and business contacts such as Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, and Leslie Wexner, the owner of retailer Victoria’s Secret. Several years ago, Gawker published a copy of Epstein’s address book and it was packed with marquee names from Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington.
Trump’s name was among them, too.
Seeing the president’s name mixed in with dozens, if not hundreds, of other well-known personalities is hardly unusual. He has had a certain form of celebrity for a very long time. But for a while Trump was more than just a casual acquaintance of Epstein.
The financier was a member of Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, and the men dined at one another’s homes. Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least once. According to Brown, Epstein is quoted in court papers as saying he wanted to set up his modeling agency – which prosecutors believe he used to get access to underage girls – “the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.”
Although a court filing says Mar-a-Lago eventually dumped Epstein from its ranks after he approached an underage girl there, Trump has generally spoken about Epstein fondly – to me and to others. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, an unidentified young woman filed a suit against Trump in which she alleged that he raped her when she was 13 at a party at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan. Trump denied the claims and the woman later dropped the suit because, her lawyer said, she was intimidated by death threats. The Trump camp described her allegations as “untrue.”
There’s a strong likelihood that Epstein will end up trying to flip for prosecutors as the reality of a lengthy prison sentence approaches, but it’s unclear how much he has that would be interesting to the feds. If he has anything sordid or compromising that he’s willing to trade about Trump, however, the president could be in for an uncomfortable summer. The public may be interested in that kind of stuff even if prosecutors aren’t.
Update #3 on Tuesday morning. Last night Bill Clinton's press secretary tweeted out a statement:
Update #4 on Thursday July 18: I'm a little behind in posting this but Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigned last Friday:
President Donald Trump announced Friday that Labor Secretary Alex Acosta has resigned, a move that comes after furor over a plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein.
Acosta has been under renewed scrutiny over his previous role as the US attorney in Miami, during which he negotiated the 2008 plea deal with Epstein. Epstein, a well-connected multi-millionaire, avoided a federal trial at the time and served only 13 months in prison for state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls. A Miami Herald investigation published last November described the plea deal, negotiated by Acosta, as the "deal of a lifetime." (From an article at CNN posted on Friday, July 12, read more here.)
Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected multimillionaire who was sentenced to just more than a year in jail to resolve allegations that he molested dozens of young girls, has been taken into custody in New York on new charges having to do with sex crimes involving minors, a person familiar with the matter said.
The precise nature of the charges — and how they differ from the previous allegations to which Epstein, now 66, pleaded guilty in 2008 — could not immediately be learned. Epstein attorney Martin Weinberg did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where Epstein is expected to appear in federal court this week, declined to comment.
The latest charges add a significant new wrinkle to the considerable political and legal saga surrounding Epstein. The wealthy financier — who counted among his friends President Trump and former president Bill Clinton — pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of soliciting prostitution in a controversial arrangement that allowed him to resolve far more serious federal allegations of molesting young girls.
His case was the subject of an investigation by the Miami Herald, which detailed how then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, now Trump’s labor secretary, shelved a 53-page federal indictment that could have put Epstein behind bars for life. The arrangement is now being investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is seeking to determine whether the attorneys involved committed “professional misconduct” in bringing about its close.
The person familiar with the matter said the new charges against Epstein are for conduct similar to those that brought about his plea deal. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the specific counts remain under seal.
Attorney Paul Cassell, who represents Epstein victims who argued in federal court that prosecutors broke the law by not informing them about the plea deal, said he was not informed about the arrest.
“If today’s report is true, it only proves that Epstein should have been charged by federal prosecutors 12 years ago in Florida,” Cassell said. “With his money, Epstein was able to buy more than a decade of delay in facing justice — but fortunately he wasn’t able to postpone justice forever.”
The Daily Beast first reported Epstein had been taken into custody.
Epstein’s victims and others had long raised concerns that he was treated too leniently because of his political connections, with much of their ire focused on Acosta. The former U.S. attorney has defended his handling of the case, saying at his March 2017 confirmation hearing for labor secretary that state prosecutors considered a charge that could have resulted in “zero jail time, zero registration as a sexual offender and zero restitution for the victims in this case.”
The arrangement that resulted in Epstein’s guilty plea, Acosta said, “guarantees that someone goes to jail, that guarantees that someone register generally and that guarantees other outcomes is a good thing.”
Notably, though, Epstein avoided federal charges entirely — until now — and his time in jail was limited, considering the allegations he faced. The Herald reported that he was allowed work release privileges, which let him leave jail six days a week for 12 hours a day to work in an office he had set up.
His obligations to register as a sex offender were also eased because when he pleaded guilty, the only minor he was convicted of soliciting was 16 years old at the time the offenses began. A federal investigation found scores of potential underage victims, including a 14-year-old girl who first flagged police.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who has questioned how the Justice Department handled Epstein’s case, said in a statement that Epstein “received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice.”
Sasse added: “Justice doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account. This billionaire can’t be let out just because he can cut a bail check. The Justice Department needs to see this through.”
Prosecutors could face significant challenges if the new case is premised on conduct that was covered as part of Epstein’s plea deal, no matter how unsavory it might be. But if investigators discovered wrongdoing they did not know about previously or that was not covered by the plea — even if it occurred years in the past — they would be allowed to bring new charges.
A person familiar with the matter said prosecutors do not have significant double jeopardy concerns or concerns about Epstein’s previous plea, meaning the charges probably involve new victims or new alleged wrongdoing. (This is the article in its entirety.)
Last November the Miami Herald published a three-part series about Epstein, starting with this:
On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.
It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.
Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.
His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.
The eccentric hedge fund manager whose friends included former President Bil Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.
Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.
But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.
As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it. (Read more here.)
Click here to read the Miami Herald's current reporting on this story.
This is a sample of what's showing up in my Twitter feed:
It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.
Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.
His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.
The eccentric hedge fund manager whose friends included former President Bil Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.
Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.
But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.
As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it. (Read more here.)
Click here to read the Miami Herald's current reporting on this story.
This is a sample of what's showing up in my Twitter feed:
He knew. pic.twitter.com/XVkN0KYcyM— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) July 7, 2019
SDNY requires a defendant who wants a cooperation deal to tell the truth about all crimes he knows of. If Epstein doesn’t want to spend a very long time in prison, perhaps the rest of his life, in prison, his path to a reduced sentence may well be through Trump. https://t.co/525MLz2jz7— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) July 7, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested for child sex trafficking— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 7, 2019
Remember, a judge ruled in February that Alex Acosta, Trump's Labor Secretary, BROKE THE LAW to give Epstein a sweetheart deal in 2007
How is Acosta still a member of Trump's cabinet?
When Acosta was nominated, I should’ve known, but didn’t know details & his role in giving Epstein a sweetheart deal. It’s gross. Acosta sided@w/the powerful predator instead of victims. Epstein needs to go to jail. Victims deserve justice. #FireAcosta https://t.co/Heel62FEOi— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) July 7, 2019
There has been speculation for years that some of the rich and influential men who frequented Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion — including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew — may have participated in the alleged abuse https://t.co/VusMFegHu5— The Cut (@TheCut) March 12, 2019
I can only imagine how ugly this could get.
Update: Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who has been covering the Epstein story for years, had this to say on MSNBC this morning, as reported at Real Clear Politics:
Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who has done original reporting on details of the alleged sex trafficking crimes of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein for the past several years, joined MSNBC Sunday morning to discuss the evidence against Epstein and the "rogues gallery" of rich, powerful, and famous people who are suspected to have used his services. Epstein was arrested Saturday in New Jersey on sex trafficking charges.
"I've felt a lot of pressure," Brown said. "Needless to say, these are very powerful people and I think that they're sweating a little bit, especially today. We don't know how much, how deep this went, how far-reaching it went in government, but there have been a lot of names that I could see on these message pads [listing clients] on a regular basis as part of the evidence. These message pads where they would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, 'I'm at this hotel.' Why do you do that, unless you're expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel? So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We'll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names."
She said Epstein's relationship with fellow Palm Beach resident Donald Trump was "friendly." "They went to dinner parties at each other's houses, Trump was also on his plane. Probably not as much as a lot of other people because, you know, Trump had his own plane. But they had a lot of social relationships. And the other interesting thing is Trump had a modeling agency, and Epstein also had a stake in a modeling agency, which they suspect he used to bring in underage girls from overseas."
"There is a comment in one of the court files where Epstein is quoted as saying, 'I want to set up my modeling agency the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.' I don't know what that means, but it is curious he was trying to do something similar to Trump." Brown said.
President Trump has commented on the case:
(Note that this is an old 10-second clip of Donald talking to Sean Hannity, saying that Bill Clinton has a "lot of problems" with Epstein. Update on July 10: Vanity Fair says this conversation is from February, 2015: Perhaps the most revealing commentary Donald Trump has offered on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who pleaded not guilty this week to sex trafficking and conspiracy, occurred in late February 2015, onstage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump, then flirting with a presidential run, was fielding softballs from Fox News host Sean Hannity when a lightning round of questions turned to a favorite topic: Bill Clinton. “Nice guy, Trump said. “Got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added, seemingly veering off topic. “Lot of problems.” Read the article here.)
"I started this story before the #MeToo movement, before the Harvey Weinstein story broke," she said. "But I think the story and my journalism benefited from the #MeToo movement because we're at a point in our culture where we're giving these cases a lot more scrutiny. I also think the reason why this case has touched a lot more nerves than some of the others is that these cases involve vulnerable girls -- 13,14,15-year-old girls."
"There are a lot of powerful people --men and women, by the way-- who take advantage of poor vulnerable women, whether they are underage, or even women who are young and come to this country trying to make a life for themselves, and really it is up to authorities to nail these cases and start to go after them, but it has been spotty," she also said. (Click here to watch the video segment.)
And yes, there's (circa 2000) art, from Newsweek:
From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images) PHOTO BY DAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY IMAGES/GETTY
Update #2 on Monday morning. There's a lot being written about this story this morning, no surprise. Here's Trump biographer Timothy L. O'Brien, writing at Bloomberg, in an article titled "Epstein Arrest Is a Worry for Donald Trump." This is the article in its entirety:
At some point in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, Jeffrey Epstein, a prominent money manager who owns sprawling homes in Palm Beach, New York, the Virgin Islands and other locales, is likely to be charged as a sex trafficker and pedophile by federal prosecutors.
Epstein, who has been accused repeatedly over the years of manipulatingand molesting underage girls, was arrested at a New Jersey airport on Saturday, according to multiple media reports. The Daily Beast, which broke the news of Epstein’s arrest, said prosecutors will accuse the financier of luring minors and other women to his homes by offering cash for massages and then sexually molesting them.
In an interesting twist, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan has put its public corruption unit in charge of the Epstein case – not, as might be expected, its human-trafficking team (although the latter unit is being consulted reportedly). It’s likely, at least in part, that the case is being handled by corruption prosecutors because of a controversial and lenient plea deal struck between Epstein and federal law enforcement officials in Florida back in 2008. The financier was being investigated at the time for having sex with underage girls – many of them orphans or runaways – at his Palm Beach mansion.
The Justice Department said in February that it planned to investigate “allegations that Department attorneys may have committed professional misconduct in the manner in which the Epstein criminal matter was resolved” in Florida. Later that month, a federal judge ruled that the same group of attorneys broke the law by not telling Epstein’s victims that the plea deal existed. The Miami-based prosecutors had prepared a 53-page federal indictment against Epstein, but his deal allowed him to plead guilty only to a state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He served 13 months in a Palm Beach prison that allowed him to leave six days a week to work. The deal also granted immunity to any of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators, who otherwise might have been swept up in his abuses.
Alexander Acosta, who is now President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2008 and he supervised the group of lawyers that forged the Epstein deal. Members of Acosta’s team from that period have said that they lacked the evidence to prove Epstein had violated federal law and did as much as they could to see that justice was served. But Julie Brown, a Miami Herald reporter, publisheda series of stories last fall that raised questions about Acosta’s independence and prompted the new federal probes of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami.
Brown’s stories took note of the extensive network of political, business and legal allies assembled by Epstein over the years and questioned the extent to which that network may have protected him or helped cushion his fall. It included: A former president, Bill Clinton; the U.K.’s Prince Andrew; powerhouse attorneys such as Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr, and Roy Black; and business contacts such as Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, and Leslie Wexner, the owner of retailer Victoria’s Secret. Several years ago, Gawker published a copy of Epstein’s address book and it was packed with marquee names from Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington.
Trump’s name was among them, too.
Seeing the president’s name mixed in with dozens, if not hundreds, of other well-known personalities is hardly unusual. He has had a certain form of celebrity for a very long time. But for a while Trump was more than just a casual acquaintance of Epstein.
The financier was a member of Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, and the men dined at one another’s homes. Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least once. According to Brown, Epstein is quoted in court papers as saying he wanted to set up his modeling agency – which prosecutors believe he used to get access to underage girls – “the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.”
Although a court filing says Mar-a-Lago eventually dumped Epstein from its ranks after he approached an underage girl there, Trump has generally spoken about Epstein fondly – to me and to others. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, an unidentified young woman filed a suit against Trump in which she alleged that he raped her when she was 13 at a party at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan. Trump denied the claims and the woman later dropped the suit because, her lawyer said, she was intimidated by death threats. The Trump camp described her allegations as “untrue.”
There’s a strong likelihood that Epstein will end up trying to flip for prosecutors as the reality of a lengthy prison sentence approaches, but it’s unclear how much he has that would be interesting to the feds. If he has anything sordid or compromising that he’s willing to trade about Trump, however, the president could be in for an uncomfortable summer. The public may be interested in that kind of stuff even if prosecutors aren’t.
Update #3 on Tuesday morning. Last night Bill Clinton's press secretary tweeted out a statement:
Statement on Jeffrey Epstein. pic.twitter.com/98ha9YYd1l— Angel Ureña (@angelurena) July 8, 2019
Update #4 on Thursday July 18: I'm a little behind in posting this but Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigned last Friday:
President Donald Trump announced Friday that Labor Secretary Alex Acosta has resigned, a move that comes after furor over a plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein.
Acosta has been under renewed scrutiny over his previous role as the US attorney in Miami, during which he negotiated the 2008 plea deal with Epstein. Epstein, a well-connected multi-millionaire, avoided a federal trial at the time and served only 13 months in prison for state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls. A Miami Herald investigation published last November described the plea deal, negotiated by Acosta, as the "deal of a lifetime." (From an article at CNN posted on Friday, July 12, read more here.)
Thursday, July 4, 2019
This Day In History, 1826: Jefferson Lives...
The ageless story of Jefferson and Adams on Independence Day is as fascinating and relevant as it’s ever been. 🇺🇸🇺🇸Read: https://t.co/NldXBcdXvk Happy 4th of July!! @RealClearNews pic.twitter.com/2gXXEPEOpj— Michael Golden (@MG_GoldenMean) July 4, 2019
According to Michael Golden's fascinating article titled Two Founders, Two Fourths, John Adams' actual words are believed to be "Thomas Jefferson survives" and I'll defer to his expertise. The article starts with this:
To this day, that most theatrical sequence of events seems almost mythological. Certainly it was long known that Jefferson had a flair for the dramatic – one of the reasons John Adams had urged him back in June of 1776 to author the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the signing, the historical significance of the occasion must have seemed obvious. But Jefferson left no doubt. On the night before his death, just before slipping into a coma, Jefferson whispered to his family: "Is it the Fourth?" He stayed alive until just past noon the following day. (Read the entire article here.)
Jefferson Lives, by-the way, is the title of a West Wing episode, the third episode of season 5, first aired on October 8, 2003. In the booklet that came with the DVD set, it's described like this:
Eager to reestablish his authority, Bartlet decides to name a vice-president. When the new Speaker of the House quashes his first choice, Secretary of State Berryhill, Bartlet makes a surprising second selection.
It's a fun episode; my favorite thing about it is this: It features series star Martin Sheen, playing President Bartlet and guest star William Devane, playing Secretary of State Lewis Berryhill. If you're of a certain age, you may remember a TV movie, The Missiles of October, about the Cuban Missile Crisis, that aired on December 18, 1974. In it, a much younger William Devane played President Kennedy; a much younger Martin Sheen played Attorney General and presidential brother Bobby Kennedy. In The West Wing, Sheen is the president and Devane is the cabinet member; for me it was fascinating to see these two actors together again after almost 30 years.
This is the trailer:
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
The 4th Of Donald - Updated
In a column titled How is Trump's parade offensive? Let me count the ways, political scientist Jonathan Bernstein has this to say about Donald's ridiculous, self-aggrandizing and expensive 4th of July event:
Donald Trump’s planned Fourth of July celebration of himself has so many things wrong with it that it’s actually possible to rank them. So that’s what I’ll do, from least objectionable to most.
Two things I won’t rank, however, because they’re unknown at this point despite some serious hints in the coverage. One is the possibility that Trump is allowing (or even arranging for) a fair amount of graft and corruption in how this event is set up. The other is that there’s a very good chance that the event just isn’t well-planned, leaving a fairly large chance of some serious logistical chaos.
But that leaves plenty that we do know about.
The authoritarian nationalist leader typically rewrites the story of the nation in his own image, in a very particular way. Our own homegrown authoritarian nationalist has proved particularly devoted to this fusion of national mythmaking and self-hagiography, often delivered in his own unique language of crass, gaudy spectacle.
The historians tell us that this is what authoritarian nationalists do. As Harvard’s Jill Lepore puts it, they replace history with tried-and-true fictions — false tales of national decline at the hands of invented threats, melded to fictitious stories of renewed national greatness, engineered by the leader himself, who is both author of the fiction and its mythic hero.
This is what we will be seeing in one form or another on the Fourth of July, no matter what Trump says in his planned Independence Day speech from the Lincoln Memorial. The very act of taking over the proceedings in the manner he has cooked up itself accomplishes this feat.
New details are emerging about Trump’s plans. The Post reports that the National Park Service will now divert millions of dollars previously earmarked to improve parks across the country to fund Trump’s celebration on the Mall.
Meanwhile, a White House official tells The Post that the plans include a plane from Air Force One’s fleet soaring overhead at precisely the moment that Trump takes the stage. Tanks will take part in the display.
Finally, the White House is handing out tickets to the event to GOP donors and political appointees. Passes are being distributed by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign.
As many critics have pointed out, by politicizing the Fourth of July so nakedly, Trump has inevitably transformed the celebration into a campaign event. It remains to be seen whether he will do so explicitly in his speech, but either way, that conversion has already been implicitly accomplished.
It’s the melding of that fact with the particular display Trump is putting on that makes this so ugly. The showcasing of military might, Trump’s association of himself with it, and the unabashed conversion of a paean to the nation’s founding into a reelection event — what it all amounts to is larger than the sum of its parts.
The naked audacity of the usurpation is itself the point. That Democrats and liberals are getting trolled into expressions of outrage over it only reinforces that point to greater effect.
Many have interpreted this moment as yet another sign that Trump does not care a whit about the idea of America. Never-Trumper Tim Miller has a good piece arguing that in multiple ways, Trump rejects the ideas about freedom, equality and self-governance at the core of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence.
Instead, Miller notes, “it’s all phony branding, no history,” an exercise that “swaps out liberty and self-government for owning the libs and self-aggrandizement.” Read the article here.
Update: It looks like Bernstein's hunch is correct. The dumb stunt isn't being very well planned ("beaches at least one plane ride away from Washington," I love it,) plus apparently there might be thunderstorms in the area tomorrow, haha. First, from Talking Points Memo, written early this morning:
Tanks and politicos are streaming into D.C. for Trump’s July 4 celebration.
But with two days to go, it’s chaos.
Vendors and officials involved with organizing Trump’s “Salute to America” event — set to be held at the Lincoln Memorial — told TPM that it was hastily planned, and as of Tuesday evening, just two days before the event, the military had yet to say where the dozens of tanks that have been ferried into the city will go on July 4.
“If any [military] assets were going to be placed anywhere or traverse city roads or city assets, we would be informed of that and help coordinate that,” Director of D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Chris Rodriguez told TPM Tuesday afternoon. “So if and when that happens, we’ll let you know.”
The Salute to America event is crammed into the otherwise normal schedule of July 4 celebrations in the nation’s capital, which include a concert, parade, and fireworks display every year.
Trump’s Salute to America event is a separate hour devoted to Trumpworld, set to feature a speech from the President, a potential show of tanks and airplanes, and his own fireworks display. But it seems event was put together in a rush.
Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan, whose company is donating fireworks for Trump’s Salute to America event, told TPM that “this should have been planned a lot sooner than it was.”
“Typically, a show like this should be done six months in advance for preparation and planning,” Zoldan said.
Yet, Zoldan said he and Phil Grucci, who runs the family firm Fireworks by Grucci, only started talking about working on a show in February when President Donald Trump tweeted that there would be a “Major fireworks display” on the Fourth.
Grucci, who served as a vendor for Trump’s inauguration, then began reaching out to people in Washington and eventually signed on to run the fireworks show for Trump’s event.
Rodriguez, the D.C. official, told TPM that planning for Salute to America began sometime between April and May.
Officials involved in planning similar events suggested to TPM that the timeframe was drastically shorter than what would typically be expected for an event of this scale.
“This is going to look very militaristic, because the only organization that can pull it together on such short notice is the military,” said Greg Jenkins, a political consultant who ran Bush’s 2004 inaugural.
Another former official involved in planning the 1991 post-Desert Storm military parade in D.C. told TPM that it took nine months to pull the effort together.
“But we did not use tanks in the parade for the very reason the Trump Administration is being questioned about doing so: it does damage to the roads,” the official said.
Other elements of the spectacle have raised eyebrows, particularly the revelation that the White House is doling out exclusive tickets to the event for its political allies via the Republican National Committee as HuffPost reported. This raises questions about whether massive federal government resources are being devoted to a partisan political effort.
A White House spokesperson did not deny to TPM that the RNC had received tickets to the event.
“There is a ticketed area for VIPs, friends and family, members of the military, and veterans,” the spokesperson said.
“It is not a political event,” he added later. “It’s a Salute to America and our independence.”
An RNC official told TPM that it was “standard practice for the RNC to receive a small number of tickets to events just as the DNC did under Democrat Presidents.”
TPM found that the Maryland GOP received tickets for the event, and boasted about receiving them direct from the White House.
“Thanks to our friends at the White House, we at the Maryland GOP have tickets for President Trump’s Fourth of July “Salute to America” celebration at the Lincoln Memorial,” reads a newsletter sent out by a Maryland GOP Committewoman Nicolee Ambrose asking those interested to RSVP for the event.
Ambrose added in the message: “I am excited to see this new approach for the 4th of July in front of the Lincoln Memorial!”
Neither Ambrose nor the Maryland GOP replied to requests for comment.
In an unusual bit of choreography, the fireworks show associated with Salute to America will run directly before the annual, previously contracted fireworks show from Garden State Fireworks.
The shows are stacked one atop the other: Trump’s event will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the corresponding fireworks will be launched from behind the monument, on the shores of the Potomac River. Garden State’s show, which was long launched from the reflecting pool, has been moved south of that site, down to West Potomac Park.
Though the fireworks vendors insisted otherwise — and Garden State didn’t respond to an interview request — competition was clearly in the air.
“I’m not putting that [Garden State] show down — it’s one or two shells at a time. Ours are going to be dozens and dozens at a time,” Zoldan, whose company donated fireworks to the Salute to America event, told TPM.
However, what the Garden State show lacks in speed, National Mall Superintendent Jeff Reinbold said in a press conference Friday, it will make up for in girth.
“The ones that will be farther south are the larger ones that you’ve seen in the past,” he said. “Those go up over 1,000 feet.”
Grucci granted that the placement of his Lincoln Memorial show meant that fireworks size would be “slightly restricted.”
(Hours after Trump tweeted his appreciation for the donated fireworks show Tuesday, Phantom Fireworks reportedly received bomb threats at their office in Ohio.)
And from Politico:
More from the Politico story:
Less than 36 hours before the event, White House aides were crafting Trump’s speech while administration and Republican National Committee officials finalized the guest lists.
A White House official declined to explain the system for handing out tickets or the various tiers of VIP access, except to say the reserved seating area – extending from the steps of the memorial to the middle the reflecting pool — will feature veterans, Trump family and friends and special guests. The First Lady, vice president and second lady, and a number of Cabinet officials are expected to attend as well as several senior White House officials — though the aide stressed this, too, was still coming together.
“They are creating this thing from scratch, and I do not know if anyone knows how it will go off,” said another White House aide. “There are questions about the ticket distribution and who will show up. The weather might be bad. Heads are spinning.”
...One Republican close to the White House said he has not heard any chatter among the donor class about attending the speech, even if it meant securing top-notch seats before one of Washington’s most majestic memorials. A Republican political operative called the week of July 4 normally a “dead zone for donors.”
“It’s not a very tough ticket to get,” said another Republican close to the White House. “They’re not going to give it away to anyone off the street, but if you have any juice at all, you can probably get the tickets.”
The White House allowed staffers to enter a lottery to receive up to 10 tickets per person — a sign of the administration’s rush to fill up that space on the mall, said a third White House aide.
Staffers typically can enter lotteries for anywhere from two to four tickets to events such as the Easter Egg Roll, but it is unusual for staffers to get offers for tickets in blocks of 10, the aide added.
The Trump event has caused tension throughout Washington during what is a typically a quiet vacation week. Congress is on recess, and many D.C. residents typically use this stretch of time to escape D.C.’s humidity.
Instead military and Pentagon officials spent the last few days privately decrying the use of tankers and military airplanes as part of the president’s speech, fearing it casts the traditionally nonpartisan U.S. military in a political light. (Read the article here.)
And one more thing. Why, exactly, were all those fireworks donated to tomorrow's event?
The two companies donating explosives and labor to President Donald Trump’s VIP-ridden July Fourth Spectacular are giants in the business: Fireworks by Grucci, known for design and production, holds Guinness records for largest aerial fireworks shell and largest fireworks display. And Phantom Fireworks, a supplier, is represented on store shelves in 47 states every Independence Day, according to its website.
Both companies also have a problem: Trump’s tariffs threats. Their donations for the July 4 show came as their industry is fighting to prevent Trump from following through on one threat in particular.
In Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, he’s so far held off on a threatened 25% tariff on a long list of imported Chinese goods that includes fireworks. China supplies the vast majority of fireworks used in the United States.
Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan, who’s donating a half-million dollars of fireworks for the show, visited the White House in late May to argue against the tariffs. He told local Youngstown, Ohio outlet The Vindicator that the meetings came at the White House’s request. He also told the paper he’d personally spoken to the President as well as other “high-level officials.” The meeting came around the same time Trump’s July 4 show was taking shape.
Zoldan told TPM he serves on the board of the American Pyrotechnics Association with Fireworks by Grucci CEO Phil Grucci, who also serves as the group’s treasurer according to its website.
A recent letter dated June 14 from APA executive director Julie L. Heckman asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to remove consumer and professional fireworks from the list of proposed tariff targets.
“These products … are critical not only to the livelihood of the small family businesses who comprise the APA membership, but to millions of families and thousands of municipalities across our great Nation celebrating our Independence Day,” Heckman wrote.
Both Zoldan and Grucci, in phone calls with TPM Tuesday, denied that they hoped for anything in return for their donated fireworks show, which Zoldan estimated would go for $1.2-1.3 million if he and Grucci had done it for a profit.
“There’s absolutely nothing that we have done, or are expecting the administration or White House to do for us,” Zoldan said. “Anybody that knows me knows that I am politically active. Hillary Clinton has been to my house. Joe Biden’s been to my house. Nancy Pelosi’s been to my house. And many Republicans have been to my house. So I do things on both sides of the aisle and I stay friends on both sides of the aisle.”
The June APA letter opposing tariffs, Grucci said, “has absolutely nothing to do with our participation in this event.”
“It was far from our minds and it still is far from our minds,” he added. Implications otherwise, he said, are “kind of insulting.”
Both men identified Gregory Zerzan as the Interior Department lawyer they worked with on the ethics clearance surrounding the large donation. The director of DOI’s Ethics Office and its designated agency ethics official, Scott De La Vega, did not respond to interview requests. (From TPM, this is the entire article.)
Update #2, at 3.30 Central time, 4.30 Eastern, on the 4th of July:
God has a sense of humor? Mother Nature doesn't like Donald? I think this is hilarious? All of the above:
Update #3 on Friday afternoon: The Republic still stands. Everyone who admires Donald thought yesterday was wonderful; those of us who despise the man thought it was a travesty. I can't imagine that anyone's mind was changed about anything.
For me, as someone who has in the past been paid real money to write speeches for other people (and who occasionally turns a pithy phrase here on the blog...) the speech itself was particularly horrifying. He stayed out of politics, mostly, but still. Who wrote that drivel?
Regarding the funniest part, something about ramparts and airports, even I'm willing to stipulate that Donald really does understand that there weren't any airports around during the Revolutionary War, or not even a few decades later in 1814, which is when the rockets' red glare over Ft. McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner. The best guess in my Twitter feed was that he couldn't read the teleprompter through the dripping wet bullet shield, and simply misspoke. But wait! Now Donald himself says the teleprompter malfunctioned (see video of that here,) which is kind of a head-scratcher: "The teleprompter malfunctioned so I threw in the part about airports for sport?" Can that be what he means? Curious.
Remember who else used to blame wayward teleprompters? Our old friend Sarah Palin, who was known to claim the teleprompter was responsible when the words coming out of her mouth turned out to be incomprehensible hooey. Donald probably doesn't want to go too far down that path.
Finally, Tom Nichols, using the same word Jonathan Bernstein used (above,) calls it Donald's "sad, strange" Fourth of July:
Let’s get an obvious point about President Trump’s Independence Day speech out of the way right at the top. It was a bad speech.
It wasn’t bad in the way most of Donald Trump’s speeches are bad, in that it was not overtly objectionable. It was relatively free of the populist claptrap and barely disguised racism that characterizes so many of the president’s rally addresses. In some ways, it was even anodyne, and certainly not even in the same league as his hideous “American carnage” inaugural address.
Instead, it was just a poorly written speech: a long, cliché-plagued, rambling trip through American history that tried to name-check battles and famous people as applause lines. Imagine “We Didn’t Start the Fire” if Billy Joel had been born in 1776 and his producers told him to take as much time as he needed to finish the song.
On that level, the “Salute to America” was a flop. Perhaps this was unavoidable, since it was never meant to salute America, but rather to provide the military display Trump has wanted for two years. Like any enforced celebration, it was flat and labored. There were no memorable phrases, no vivid images and no bold proposals — unless you count a promise to NASA stalwart Gene Kranz to plant a U.S. flag on Mars one day. It would have been a challenging speech to deliver even for a better speaker, and Trump, who hates reading from prepared remarks, plodded through it with a strangely detached presence and a certain amount of mushy enunciation, including a weird blip where he referred to the glorious military capture of some airports in colonial America.
On another level, however, the speech was indeed offensive. Not only did it attempt to militarize our most sacred national holiday, but Trump tried to bathe himself in borrowed legitimacy from a military that was forced to march, sing and fly for him.
There’s nothing wrong with recounting stories of American military heroism and bravery. We even have an entire holiday called Veterans Day devoted to honoring the sacrifices and valor of the men and women who have served our country. And it’s perfectly appropriate to remember that the United States was born out of a revolution, in which both ink and gunpowder were powerful weapons against monarchism and tyranny.
It is another matter entirely, however, to call forward the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs and make them stand there during a cheerless reading of the exploits of each branch of the armed services while a military chorus sings their anthems and their various aircraft roar past — including the narcissistic insistence that Air Force One fly overhead as the president took the stage. (It was also silly, because Air Force One isn’t “Air Force One” unless the president is on board.)
Mining the glories of past military battles while flanked by defense chiefs is the kind of thing Soviet leaders used to do while droning from their reviewing stand in Moscow. It wasn’t patriotic or stirring; it was cringe-inducing. This is probably one of many reasons that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and former Chief of Staff John Kelly — both retired generals — reportedly squashed this idea whenever it came up.
The “Salute to America,” in the end, was a miniature military review, held as a partisan exercise for an insecure president who thirsts for legitimacy as a military hero. Our Constitution vests the leadership of the armed forces in an elected civilian for a reason, not least among them so that our republic does not fall prey to a generalissimo or a caudillo.
The speech itself was not the problem. Its content will be forgotten — except, perhaps by students of speechwriting, who might use it as an example of what to avoid in their craft. Everything around it, however, from beginning to end, was an offense to the traditions of our republic and our Constitution.
Nichols is a professor at the Naval War College and a former Republican Senate aide. The views expressed here are his alone.
That was how the American president spoke on this 243rd commemoration of a nation that began its independence with a solemn acknowledgement of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” No non-American could watch that spectacle at the Lincoln Memorial and feel that America stood for anything good or right or universal. Power worshipped power, for its own sake.
“We will always be the people who defeated a tyrant, crossed a continent, harnessed science, took to the skies, and soared into the heavens because we will never forget that we are Americans and the future belongs to us.” That sentence of self-congratulation toward the end of Trump’s speech was probably lodged in the clipboard memory of some 1980s vintage word processor hauled from the Executive Office Building.
It’s bumpf, a thousand times typed, a thousand times said. And yet this July 4, after all the rodomontade that preceded it, I found myself paying attention to those hackneyed words in a way I never had before. Will Americans always be that people? Are Americans that people now?
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! (This is the article in its entirety.)
Donald Trump’s planned Fourth of July celebration of himself has so many things wrong with it that it’s actually possible to rank them. So that’s what I’ll do, from least objectionable to most.
Two things I won’t rank, however, because they’re unknown at this point despite some serious hints in the coverage. One is the possibility that Trump is allowing (or even arranging for) a fair amount of graft and corruption in how this event is set up. The other is that there’s a very good chance that the event just isn’t well-planned, leaving a fairly large chance of some serious logistical chaos.
But that leaves plenty that we do know about.
To recap Trump is using the military to mark a civilian holiday; threatens to damage priceless historical monuments in the process; is giving VIP access to campaign donors at the publicly-funded event; and— Jeffrey Lazarus (@jlazarus001) July 3, 2019
is diverting funds from national park maintenance to do it. Right. Gotcha.
I’m not intrinsically upset about the costs of Trump’s extravaganza – which include millions spent out of the federal treasury, plus likely damage to infrastructure in Washington and surrounding areas, plus the very real costs to military personnel and others in having to work on the holiday instead of relaxing and enjoying it. And even the costs to travelers delayed at Washington National.
The costs are upsetting mainly because I think the event is a mistake. I have no problem with the costs of the regular Washington Fourth of July celebration; I generally approve of a fair amount of government spending and nonmonetary costs in the pursuit of celebrating the nation’s holidays, especially this one. Still, it does appear that this is all going to be unusually expensive, and unusually cavalier about inconveniencing both the troops and ordinary citizens.
What’s worse than the costs is turning a nonpartisan celebration of the nation into a partisan event, with the Republican National Committee distributing VIP access to donors. That’s really unfortunate. Washington’s Fourth of July celebration has never been partisan, at least in modern times. And some of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding his event has already included bashing Democrats for supposedly ruining the military before he took office. There’s always a tendency for the incumbent party to hint that it is particularly entitled to the symbols of the nation, but it’s important to keep such tendencies in check. Democracy depends on what’s in many ways a very unnatural willingness to support the government even when it’s filled with one’s political opponents; for that to work at all, the in-party has to at least pretend that it represents everyone. Trump has never accepted that part of his job, and it appears that his Fourth of July will be another example of rejecting it.
What’s worse than the partisanship is the central place of Trump in the celebration. The national holidays of the U.S. simply aren’t about the aggrandizement of the president, and it’s an excellent tradition that presidents typically haven’t taken part at all in the Washington Fourth of July events, much less hijacked them for their own use. It would be bad enough if Trump could be trusted to deliver a bunch of bland patriotic clichés in his planned address to the nation – even if all he did was read the Declaration of Independence – but the record is pretty clear that he isn’t capable of speaking to the nation’s democratic heritage, or in fact giving any kind of speech without his usual bluster and braggadocio. At any rate, the great leader presiding over a militaristic celebration of himself and the nation is what happens in authoritarian regimes, not in democracies.
Which gets to the very worst part of Trump’s Independence Day travesty: putting the military front and center in his vision of the United States. We’ve had altogether too much of this in every context over the last few years, which is pretty much what one would expect from a nation that has been at war for so long. But it’s just wrong for the Fourth of July, which has always been about freedom and democracy and which should be about politics at its best.
Nations that have nothing but military hardware to brag about center their celebrations on tanks and warplanes. The U.S. traditionally celebrates what Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness” – both the private happiness of personal enjoyment and the public happiness of a shared political culture and a tradition of civic, including political, participation. Trump doesn’t seem to understand any of that as central to the U.S. That he’s inflicting his politics on the military is dangerous; that he’s inflicting his vision of the U.S. as a military nation above all else is dangerous, too.
For those of us who appreciate the real spirit of the Fourth, the whole thing is just indescribably sad. (This is the column in its entirety.)
The costs are upsetting mainly because I think the event is a mistake. I have no problem with the costs of the regular Washington Fourth of July celebration; I generally approve of a fair amount of government spending and nonmonetary costs in the pursuit of celebrating the nation’s holidays, especially this one. Still, it does appear that this is all going to be unusually expensive, and unusually cavalier about inconveniencing both the troops and ordinary citizens.
What’s worse than the costs is turning a nonpartisan celebration of the nation into a partisan event, with the Republican National Committee distributing VIP access to donors. That’s really unfortunate. Washington’s Fourth of July celebration has never been partisan, at least in modern times. And some of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding his event has already included bashing Democrats for supposedly ruining the military before he took office. There’s always a tendency for the incumbent party to hint that it is particularly entitled to the symbols of the nation, but it’s important to keep such tendencies in check. Democracy depends on what’s in many ways a very unnatural willingness to support the government even when it’s filled with one’s political opponents; for that to work at all, the in-party has to at least pretend that it represents everyone. Trump has never accepted that part of his job, and it appears that his Fourth of July will be another example of rejecting it.
What’s worse than the partisanship is the central place of Trump in the celebration. The national holidays of the U.S. simply aren’t about the aggrandizement of the president, and it’s an excellent tradition that presidents typically haven’t taken part at all in the Washington Fourth of July events, much less hijacked them for their own use. It would be bad enough if Trump could be trusted to deliver a bunch of bland patriotic clichés in his planned address to the nation – even if all he did was read the Declaration of Independence – but the record is pretty clear that he isn’t capable of speaking to the nation’s democratic heritage, or in fact giving any kind of speech without his usual bluster and braggadocio. At any rate, the great leader presiding over a militaristic celebration of himself and the nation is what happens in authoritarian regimes, not in democracies.
Which gets to the very worst part of Trump’s Independence Day travesty: putting the military front and center in his vision of the United States. We’ve had altogether too much of this in every context over the last few years, which is pretty much what one would expect from a nation that has been at war for so long. But it’s just wrong for the Fourth of July, which has always been about freedom and democracy and which should be about politics at its best.
Nations that have nothing but military hardware to brag about center their celebrations on tanks and warplanes. The U.S. traditionally celebrates what Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness” – both the private happiness of personal enjoyment and the public happiness of a shared political culture and a tradition of civic, including political, participation. Trump doesn’t seem to understand any of that as central to the U.S. That he’s inflicting his politics on the military is dangerous; that he’s inflicting his vision of the U.S. as a military nation above all else is dangerous, too.
For those of us who appreciate the real spirit of the Fourth, the whole thing is just indescribably sad. (This is the column in its entirety.)
Writing at the Washington Post, in an article titled Trump's hijacking of the Fourth of July just got uglier, Greg Sargent piles on:
The historians tell us that this is what authoritarian nationalists do. As Harvard’s Jill Lepore puts it, they replace history with tried-and-true fictions — false tales of national decline at the hands of invented threats, melded to fictitious stories of renewed national greatness, engineered by the leader himself, who is both author of the fiction and its mythic hero.
This is what we will be seeing in one form or another on the Fourth of July, no matter what Trump says in his planned Independence Day speech from the Lincoln Memorial. The very act of taking over the proceedings in the manner he has cooked up itself accomplishes this feat.
New details are emerging about Trump’s plans. The Post reports that the National Park Service will now divert millions of dollars previously earmarked to improve parks across the country to fund Trump’s celebration on the Mall.
Meanwhile, a White House official tells The Post that the plans include a plane from Air Force One’s fleet soaring overhead at precisely the moment that Trump takes the stage. Tanks will take part in the display.
Finally, the White House is handing out tickets to the event to GOP donors and political appointees. Passes are being distributed by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign.
As many critics have pointed out, by politicizing the Fourth of July so nakedly, Trump has inevitably transformed the celebration into a campaign event. It remains to be seen whether he will do so explicitly in his speech, but either way, that conversion has already been implicitly accomplished.
It’s the melding of that fact with the particular display Trump is putting on that makes this so ugly. The showcasing of military might, Trump’s association of himself with it, and the unabashed conversion of a paean to the nation’s founding into a reelection event — what it all amounts to is larger than the sum of its parts.
The naked audacity of the usurpation is itself the point. That Democrats and liberals are getting trolled into expressions of outrage over it only reinforces that point to greater effect.
Many have interpreted this moment as yet another sign that Trump does not care a whit about the idea of America. Never-Trumper Tim Miller has a good piece arguing that in multiple ways, Trump rejects the ideas about freedom, equality and self-governance at the core of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence.
Instead, Miller notes, “it’s all phony branding, no history,” an exercise that “swaps out liberty and self-government for owning the libs and self-aggrandizement.” Read the article here.
Update: It looks like Bernstein's hunch is correct. The dumb stunt isn't being very well planned ("beaches at least one plane ride away from Washington," I love it,) plus apparently there might be thunderstorms in the area tomorrow, haha. First, from Talking Points Memo, written early this morning:
Tanks and politicos are streaming into D.C. for Trump’s July 4 celebration.
But with two days to go, it’s chaos.
Vendors and officials involved with organizing Trump’s “Salute to America” event — set to be held at the Lincoln Memorial — told TPM that it was hastily planned, and as of Tuesday evening, just two days before the event, the military had yet to say where the dozens of tanks that have been ferried into the city will go on July 4.
“If any [military] assets were going to be placed anywhere or traverse city roads or city assets, we would be informed of that and help coordinate that,” Director of D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Chris Rodriguez told TPM Tuesday afternoon. “So if and when that happens, we’ll let you know.”
The Salute to America event is crammed into the otherwise normal schedule of July 4 celebrations in the nation’s capital, which include a concert, parade, and fireworks display every year.
Trump’s Salute to America event is a separate hour devoted to Trumpworld, set to feature a speech from the President, a potential show of tanks and airplanes, and his own fireworks display. But it seems event was put together in a rush.
Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan, whose company is donating fireworks for Trump’s Salute to America event, told TPM that “this should have been planned a lot sooner than it was.”
“Typically, a show like this should be done six months in advance for preparation and planning,” Zoldan said.
Yet, Zoldan said he and Phil Grucci, who runs the family firm Fireworks by Grucci, only started talking about working on a show in February when President Donald Trump tweeted that there would be a “Major fireworks display” on the Fourth.
Grucci, who served as a vendor for Trump’s inauguration, then began reaching out to people in Washington and eventually signed on to run the fireworks show for Trump’s event.
Rodriguez, the D.C. official, told TPM that planning for Salute to America began sometime between April and May.
Officials involved in planning similar events suggested to TPM that the timeframe was drastically shorter than what would typically be expected for an event of this scale.
“This is going to look very militaristic, because the only organization that can pull it together on such short notice is the military,” said Greg Jenkins, a political consultant who ran Bush’s 2004 inaugural.
Another former official involved in planning the 1991 post-Desert Storm military parade in D.C. told TPM that it took nine months to pull the effort together.
“But we did not use tanks in the parade for the very reason the Trump Administration is being questioned about doing so: it does damage to the roads,” the official said.
Other elements of the spectacle have raised eyebrows, particularly the revelation that the White House is doling out exclusive tickets to the event for its political allies via the Republican National Committee as HuffPost reported. This raises questions about whether massive federal government resources are being devoted to a partisan political effort.
A White House spokesperson did not deny to TPM that the RNC had received tickets to the event.
“There is a ticketed area for VIPs, friends and family, members of the military, and veterans,” the spokesperson said.
“It is not a political event,” he added later. “It’s a Salute to America and our independence.”
An RNC official told TPM that it was “standard practice for the RNC to receive a small number of tickets to events just as the DNC did under Democrat Presidents.”
TPM found that the Maryland GOP received tickets for the event, and boasted about receiving them direct from the White House.
“Thanks to our friends at the White House, we at the Maryland GOP have tickets for President Trump’s Fourth of July “Salute to America” celebration at the Lincoln Memorial,” reads a newsletter sent out by a Maryland GOP Committewoman Nicolee Ambrose asking those interested to RSVP for the event.
Ambrose added in the message: “I am excited to see this new approach for the 4th of July in front of the Lincoln Memorial!”
Neither Ambrose nor the Maryland GOP replied to requests for comment.
In an unusual bit of choreography, the fireworks show associated with Salute to America will run directly before the annual, previously contracted fireworks show from Garden State Fireworks.
The shows are stacked one atop the other: Trump’s event will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the corresponding fireworks will be launched from behind the monument, on the shores of the Potomac River. Garden State’s show, which was long launched from the reflecting pool, has been moved south of that site, down to West Potomac Park.
Though the fireworks vendors insisted otherwise — and Garden State didn’t respond to an interview request — competition was clearly in the air.
“I’m not putting that [Garden State] show down — it’s one or two shells at a time. Ours are going to be dozens and dozens at a time,” Zoldan, whose company donated fireworks to the Salute to America event, told TPM.
However, what the Garden State show lacks in speed, National Mall Superintendent Jeff Reinbold said in a press conference Friday, it will make up for in girth.
“The ones that will be farther south are the larger ones that you’ve seen in the past,” he said. “Those go up over 1,000 feet.”
Grucci granted that the placement of his Lincoln Memorial show meant that fireworks size would be “slightly restricted.”
(Hours after Trump tweeted his appreciation for the donated fireworks show Tuesday, Phantom Fireworks reportedly received bomb threats at their office in Ohio.)
And from Politico:
NEW: Who exactly is filling the VIP section for POTUS's speech?— Nancy Cook (@nancook) July 3, 2019
WH aides worried about crowd size and media coverage of Trump's 4th of July event, which he is clearly jacked up about...https://t.co/NPloWyXUWE
“They started this too late and everyone has plans already,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “Everyone will be there in spirit, but in reality, people planned their July 4th activities weeks ago.”https://t.co/NPloWyXUWE— Nancy Cook (@nancook) July 3, 2019
"An informal survey of more than a half dozen Trump donors and allies showed that none plan to attend. Several Republicans close to the White House returned POLITICO’s calls from beaches at least one plane ride away from Washington." https://t.co/TjvsOilq1A— Louis Nelson (@louisjnelson) July 3, 2019
Less than 36 hours before the event, White House aides were crafting Trump’s speech while administration and Republican National Committee officials finalized the guest lists.
A White House official declined to explain the system for handing out tickets or the various tiers of VIP access, except to say the reserved seating area – extending from the steps of the memorial to the middle the reflecting pool — will feature veterans, Trump family and friends and special guests. The First Lady, vice president and second lady, and a number of Cabinet officials are expected to attend as well as several senior White House officials — though the aide stressed this, too, was still coming together.
“They are creating this thing from scratch, and I do not know if anyone knows how it will go off,” said another White House aide. “There are questions about the ticket distribution and who will show up. The weather might be bad. Heads are spinning.”
...One Republican close to the White House said he has not heard any chatter among the donor class about attending the speech, even if it meant securing top-notch seats before one of Washington’s most majestic memorials. A Republican political operative called the week of July 4 normally a “dead zone for donors.”
“It’s not a very tough ticket to get,” said another Republican close to the White House. “They’re not going to give it away to anyone off the street, but if you have any juice at all, you can probably get the tickets.”
The White House allowed staffers to enter a lottery to receive up to 10 tickets per person — a sign of the administration’s rush to fill up that space on the mall, said a third White House aide.
Staffers typically can enter lotteries for anywhere from two to four tickets to events such as the Easter Egg Roll, but it is unusual for staffers to get offers for tickets in blocks of 10, the aide added.
Instead military and Pentagon officials spent the last few days privately decrying the use of tankers and military airplanes as part of the president’s speech, fearing it casts the traditionally nonpartisan U.S. military in a political light. (Read the article here.)
And one more thing. Why, exactly, were all those fireworks donated to tomorrow's event?
The two companies donating explosives and labor to President Donald Trump’s VIP-ridden July Fourth Spectacular are giants in the business: Fireworks by Grucci, known for design and production, holds Guinness records for largest aerial fireworks shell and largest fireworks display. And Phantom Fireworks, a supplier, is represented on store shelves in 47 states every Independence Day, according to its website.
Both companies also have a problem: Trump’s tariffs threats. Their donations for the July 4 show came as their industry is fighting to prevent Trump from following through on one threat in particular.
In Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, he’s so far held off on a threatened 25% tariff on a long list of imported Chinese goods that includes fireworks. China supplies the vast majority of fireworks used in the United States.
Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan, who’s donating a half-million dollars of fireworks for the show, visited the White House in late May to argue against the tariffs. He told local Youngstown, Ohio outlet The Vindicator that the meetings came at the White House’s request. He also told the paper he’d personally spoken to the President as well as other “high-level officials.” The meeting came around the same time Trump’s July 4 show was taking shape.
Zoldan told TPM he serves on the board of the American Pyrotechnics Association with Fireworks by Grucci CEO Phil Grucci, who also serves as the group’s treasurer according to its website.
A recent letter dated June 14 from APA executive director Julie L. Heckman asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to remove consumer and professional fireworks from the list of proposed tariff targets.
“These products … are critical not only to the livelihood of the small family businesses who comprise the APA membership, but to millions of families and thousands of municipalities across our great Nation celebrating our Independence Day,” Heckman wrote.
Both Zoldan and Grucci, in phone calls with TPM Tuesday, denied that they hoped for anything in return for their donated fireworks show, which Zoldan estimated would go for $1.2-1.3 million if he and Grucci had done it for a profit.
“There’s absolutely nothing that we have done, or are expecting the administration or White House to do for us,” Zoldan said. “Anybody that knows me knows that I am politically active. Hillary Clinton has been to my house. Joe Biden’s been to my house. Nancy Pelosi’s been to my house. And many Republicans have been to my house. So I do things on both sides of the aisle and I stay friends on both sides of the aisle.”
The June APA letter opposing tariffs, Grucci said, “has absolutely nothing to do with our participation in this event.”
“It was far from our minds and it still is far from our minds,” he added. Implications otherwise, he said, are “kind of insulting.”
Both men identified Gregory Zerzan as the Interior Department lawyer they worked with on the ethics clearance surrounding the large donation. The director of DOI’s Ethics Office and its designated agency ethics official, Scott De La Vega, did not respond to interview requests. (From TPM, this is the entire article.)
Update #2, at 3.30 Central time, 4.30 Eastern, on the 4th of July:
Yes, I'm laughing.The program will start soon, I’m told. pic.twitter.com/rf5Q8yoNc1— Meredith Lee (@meredithllee) July 4, 2019
God has a sense of humor? Mother Nature doesn't like Donald? I think this is hilarious? All of the above:
— Jim Spellman (@jimspellmanTV) July 4, 2019
When it rains, it pours. #TrumpParade pic.twitter.com/PMpY2Z2mnX— Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer (@ksenijapavlovic) July 4, 2019
Update #3 on Friday afternoon: The Republic still stands. Everyone who admires Donald thought yesterday was wonderful; those of us who despise the man thought it was a travesty. I can't imagine that anyone's mind was changed about anything.
For me, as someone who has in the past been paid real money to write speeches for other people (and who occasionally turns a pithy phrase here on the blog...) the speech itself was particularly horrifying. He stayed out of politics, mostly, but still. Who wrote that drivel?
Regarding the funniest part, something about ramparts and airports, even I'm willing to stipulate that Donald really does understand that there weren't any airports around during the Revolutionary War, or not even a few decades later in 1814, which is when the rockets' red glare over Ft. McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner. The best guess in my Twitter feed was that he couldn't read the teleprompter through the dripping wet bullet shield, and simply misspoke. But wait! Now Donald himself says the teleprompter malfunctioned (see video of that here,) which is kind of a head-scratcher: "The teleprompter malfunctioned so I threw in the part about airports for sport?" Can that be what he means? Curious.
Remember who else used to blame wayward teleprompters? Our old friend Sarah Palin, who was known to claim the teleprompter was responsible when the words coming out of her mouth turned out to be incomprehensible hooey. Donald probably doesn't want to go too far down that path.
Finally, Tom Nichols, using the same word Jonathan Bernstein used (above,) calls it Donald's "sad, strange" Fourth of July:
Trump’s sad, strange Fourth of July - New York Daily News https://t.co/VttkZxavx7— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 5, 2019
...and this is his article at the New York Daily News, in its entirety:
It wasn’t bad in the way most of Donald Trump’s speeches are bad, in that it was not overtly objectionable. It was relatively free of the populist claptrap and barely disguised racism that characterizes so many of the president’s rally addresses. In some ways, it was even anodyne, and certainly not even in the same league as his hideous “American carnage” inaugural address.
Instead, it was just a poorly written speech: a long, cliché-plagued, rambling trip through American history that tried to name-check battles and famous people as applause lines. Imagine “We Didn’t Start the Fire” if Billy Joel had been born in 1776 and his producers told him to take as much time as he needed to finish the song.
On that level, the “Salute to America” was a flop. Perhaps this was unavoidable, since it was never meant to salute America, but rather to provide the military display Trump has wanted for two years. Like any enforced celebration, it was flat and labored. There were no memorable phrases, no vivid images and no bold proposals — unless you count a promise to NASA stalwart Gene Kranz to plant a U.S. flag on Mars one day. It would have been a challenging speech to deliver even for a better speaker, and Trump, who hates reading from prepared remarks, plodded through it with a strangely detached presence and a certain amount of mushy enunciation, including a weird blip where he referred to the glorious military capture of some airports in colonial America.
On another level, however, the speech was indeed offensive. Not only did it attempt to militarize our most sacred national holiday, but Trump tried to bathe himself in borrowed legitimacy from a military that was forced to march, sing and fly for him.
There’s nothing wrong with recounting stories of American military heroism and bravery. We even have an entire holiday called Veterans Day devoted to honoring the sacrifices and valor of the men and women who have served our country. And it’s perfectly appropriate to remember that the United States was born out of a revolution, in which both ink and gunpowder were powerful weapons against monarchism and tyranny.
It is another matter entirely, however, to call forward the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs and make them stand there during a cheerless reading of the exploits of each branch of the armed services while a military chorus sings their anthems and their various aircraft roar past — including the narcissistic insistence that Air Force One fly overhead as the president took the stage. (It was also silly, because Air Force One isn’t “Air Force One” unless the president is on board.)
Mining the glories of past military battles while flanked by defense chiefs is the kind of thing Soviet leaders used to do while droning from their reviewing stand in Moscow. It wasn’t patriotic or stirring; it was cringe-inducing. This is probably one of many reasons that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and former Chief of Staff John Kelly — both retired generals — reportedly squashed this idea whenever it came up.
The “Salute to America,” in the end, was a miniature military review, held as a partisan exercise for an insecure president who thirsts for legitimacy as a military hero. Our Constitution vests the leadership of the armed forces in an elected civilian for a reason, not least among them so that our republic does not fall prey to a generalissimo or a caudillo.
The speech itself was not the problem. Its content will be forgotten — except, perhaps by students of speechwriting, who might use it as an example of what to avoid in their craft. Everything around it, however, from beginning to end, was an offense to the traditions of our republic and our Constitution.
Nichols is a professor at the Naval War College and a former Republican Senate aide. The views expressed here are his alone.
Anyway, the Republic still stands. (But I would keep an eye on those Chinese fireworks tariffs.)
Update #4 on Saturday morning. In an article at The Atlantic titled Trump's Recessional, The president's speech existed only to provide a reason why he needed to stand in one place long enough for waves of warplanes to cross the sky, former Republican speechwriter David Frum does a deeper dive into why Donald's speech was so wretched:
In the days when I helped people with speeches, our relationship often began like this:
“Can you help me with this speech?”
“Sure. What do you want to say?”
[Awkward pause.]
It’s amazing how seldom there came an answer to the question. The speaker would often have a very clear idea of the attitude he wanted to project, but no urgent message to communicate. He wanted to fill air for 10 or 12 minutes or longer, at the end of which people would regard him as compassionate or strong or whatever other image he had in mind. But how to get from here to there? Well, that’s why he was paying me.
I was jolted back to those days as I reread President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July speech the day after it was delivered.
Trump’s speech was written by people who did not know what they wanted to say. It was a litany of old glories, a shout-out to heroes carefully balanced by race and sex, but with no conscious theme or message. It narrated old triumphs in war and commerce, but without apparent purpose or direction. First this, then that, now a third thing.
Trump wanted pictures and video of his big day: Trump standing in the place where Martin Luther King Jr. once stood, the podium swathed in flags and bunting, bordered by tanks, adoring audience in front, screeching fighter jets overhead … Strong! Proud! The speech existed only to provide a reason why he needed to stand in one place long enough for five waves of warplanes to cross the sky.
Yet it’s a strange thing about words. Talk long enough, and sooner or later you will say something. Consciously or not, Trump did say things that evening.
As Trump retold the story of the Pacific War, he said this: “Nobody could beat us. Nobody could come close.” When he paid tribute to the Air Force, he said this: “As President Roosevelt said, the Nazis built a fortress around Europe, ‘but forgot to put a roof on it.’ So we crushed them all from the air.” He added: “No enemy has attacked our people without being met by a roar of thunder, and the awesome might of those who bid farewell to Earth, and soar into the wild blue yonder.” Bringing the story to more recent times: “The Army brought America’s righteous fury down to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and cleared the bloodthirsty killers from their caves.”
Were these wars right or just? Why were they fought? What were their outcomes? Except for the mentions of “freedoms” sprinkled randomly through the text, those questions went unconsidered. Instead, Trump would periodically ad-lib “What a great country!” after this or that mention of power and violence. America is great because it crushes all before it. Altering for circumstances, it was a speech that could have been given by Kaiser Wilhelm or Napoleon or Julius Caesar or the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib. A great country is one that is feared by its enemies, that can inflict more devastating destruction than any other.
How did the United States get so strong and fearsome? Trump revealed some assumptions about that, too. He said of America’s “warriors”:
They guard our birthright with vigilance and fierce devotion to the flag and to our great country. Now we must go forward as a nation with that same unity of purpose. As long as we stay true to our cause, as long as we remember our great history, as long as we never ever stop fighting for a better future, then there will be nothing that America cannot do.
Devotion. Unity. History. Fighting.
But not: Democracy. Justice. Individuality. Peace.
From time to time, one of Trump’s more devout speechwriters will try to insert references to God into the president’s mouth. Those references never sound natural from the least spiritual president in the nation’s history. They were, fascinatingly, all but absent from this speech commemorating the independence of a nation, in the apt phrase of G. K. Chesterton, with the soul of a church. Instead, there was only vainglorious boasting: See our wealth, see our power, see our glorious triumphs over the mounded corpses of our enemies. We will always win, because we always fight.
It was as if the whole ceremony fulfilled Rudyard Kipling’s foreboding of empires end:
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe …
Update #4 on Saturday morning. In an article at The Atlantic titled Trump's Recessional, The president's speech existed only to provide a reason why he needed to stand in one place long enough for waves of warplanes to cross the sky, former Republican speechwriter David Frum does a deeper dive into why Donald's speech was so wretched:
In the days when I helped people with speeches, our relationship often began like this:
“Can you help me with this speech?”
“Sure. What do you want to say?”
[Awkward pause.]
It’s amazing how seldom there came an answer to the question. The speaker would often have a very clear idea of the attitude he wanted to project, but no urgent message to communicate. He wanted to fill air for 10 or 12 minutes or longer, at the end of which people would regard him as compassionate or strong or whatever other image he had in mind. But how to get from here to there? Well, that’s why he was paying me.
I was jolted back to those days as I reread President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July speech the day after it was delivered.
Trump’s speech was written by people who did not know what they wanted to say. It was a litany of old glories, a shout-out to heroes carefully balanced by race and sex, but with no conscious theme or message. It narrated old triumphs in war and commerce, but without apparent purpose or direction. First this, then that, now a third thing.
Trump wanted pictures and video of his big day: Trump standing in the place where Martin Luther King Jr. once stood, the podium swathed in flags and bunting, bordered by tanks, adoring audience in front, screeching fighter jets overhead … Strong! Proud! The speech existed only to provide a reason why he needed to stand in one place long enough for five waves of warplanes to cross the sky.
Yet it’s a strange thing about words. Talk long enough, and sooner or later you will say something. Consciously or not, Trump did say things that evening.
As Trump retold the story of the Pacific War, he said this: “Nobody could beat us. Nobody could come close.” When he paid tribute to the Air Force, he said this: “As President Roosevelt said, the Nazis built a fortress around Europe, ‘but forgot to put a roof on it.’ So we crushed them all from the air.” He added: “No enemy has attacked our people without being met by a roar of thunder, and the awesome might of those who bid farewell to Earth, and soar into the wild blue yonder.” Bringing the story to more recent times: “The Army brought America’s righteous fury down to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and cleared the bloodthirsty killers from their caves.”
Were these wars right or just? Why were they fought? What were their outcomes? Except for the mentions of “freedoms” sprinkled randomly through the text, those questions went unconsidered. Instead, Trump would periodically ad-lib “What a great country!” after this or that mention of power and violence. America is great because it crushes all before it. Altering for circumstances, it was a speech that could have been given by Kaiser Wilhelm or Napoleon or Julius Caesar or the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib. A great country is one that is feared by its enemies, that can inflict more devastating destruction than any other.
How did the United States get so strong and fearsome? Trump revealed some assumptions about that, too. He said of America’s “warriors”:
They guard our birthright with vigilance and fierce devotion to the flag and to our great country. Now we must go forward as a nation with that same unity of purpose. As long as we stay true to our cause, as long as we remember our great history, as long as we never ever stop fighting for a better future, then there will be nothing that America cannot do.
Devotion. Unity. History. Fighting.
But not: Democracy. Justice. Individuality. Peace.
From time to time, one of Trump’s more devout speechwriters will try to insert references to God into the president’s mouth. Those references never sound natural from the least spiritual president in the nation’s history. They were, fascinatingly, all but absent from this speech commemorating the independence of a nation, in the apt phrase of G. K. Chesterton, with the soul of a church. Instead, there was only vainglorious boasting: See our wealth, see our power, see our glorious triumphs over the mounded corpses of our enemies. We will always win, because we always fight.
It was as if the whole ceremony fulfilled Rudyard Kipling’s foreboding of empires end:
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe …
That was how the American president spoke on this 243rd commemoration of a nation that began its independence with a solemn acknowledgement of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” No non-American could watch that spectacle at the Lincoln Memorial and feel that America stood for anything good or right or universal. Power worshipped power, for its own sake.
“We will always be the people who defeated a tyrant, crossed a continent, harnessed science, took to the skies, and soared into the heavens because we will never forget that we are Americans and the future belongs to us.” That sentence of self-congratulation toward the end of Trump’s speech was probably lodged in the clipboard memory of some 1980s vintage word processor hauled from the Executive Office Building.
It’s bumpf, a thousand times typed, a thousand times said. And yet this July 4, after all the rodomontade that preceded it, I found myself paying attention to those hackneyed words in a way I never had before. Will Americans always be that people? Are Americans that people now?
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! (This is the article in its entirety.)
By-the-way, do you know what "bumpf" is? How about "rodomontade"? Me neither but I like to learn new words, so I looked them up:
Bumpf: Useless printed instructions and manuals. Originated in England during World War II when English soldiers were overwhelmed with unnecessary printed materials and used them as they would toilet tissue or "bum fodder". (From UrbanDictionary.com)
Rodomontade: Noun; vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious, blustering talk. (From Dictionary.com)
Rodomontade: Noun; vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious, blustering talk. (From Dictionary.com)
If you want more evidence of how wretchedly insufferable and narcissistic Donald really is, ponder this tweet, sent out this morning:
Our Country is the envy of the World. Thank you, Mr. President! https://t.co/2h8mvu16YX— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2019
Is that really how a strong, smart, emotionally and physically healthy person talks? About himself? I promise I'm not being snarky when I say that I'm beginning to wonder of some kind of age-related mental decline has started to set in.
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