The billionaire is still exaggerating, generalizing, blaming and tweeting.
.. Why would a candidate who pledged to “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders add so many D.C. lobbyists to his transition team? Change, Trump said, takes time.
.. He will continue to exaggerate, to generalize, to obfuscate, to blame and to tweet.“It’s a great form of communication,” Trump said of his Twitter feed (Sunday morning, hours before the interview aired, Trump fired off three tweets slamming the New York Times)... His approach to Twitter mirrors his general boardroom-style approach: everything is open to negotiation. And his behavior and rhetoric are likely to remain every bit as malleable as his ideological leanings—which is to say: dependent on the situation and the role he is attempting to play at the time.
.. He also sought to allay the anxieties of gays and lesbians when he asserted that same-sex marriage is the law of the land: “It’s done. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And I’m—I’m fine with that,” he said.
.. And Trump acknowledged the possible reality of appointing a pro-life Supreme Court majority that could overturn Roe v. Wade, but seemed reluctant to consider the implications. When pressed by Stahl, he agreed that some women will “perhaps have to go—they’ll have to go to another state.”
“And that’s OK?” Stahl responded.
“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.”
.. Asked about asking the government to continue to investigate Clinton, Trump seemed conflicted about doing so yet unable to completely close the door.
“They’re, they’re good people,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt them.
“And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do ‘60 Minutes’ together.”
An Election Is Not a Suicide Mission
To the pro-choice side, especially to lukewarm pro-choicers looking to feel better about their own muddled sense of things, this choice has sometimes been cast as evidence that pro-lifers don’t really believe our own rhetoric — that if we really believed abortion to be murder, really murder, we wouldn’t be incrementalists and small-r republicans on the issue; we would support violence, rebellion, nullification, secession, you name it.
.. The strongest counterpoint to this line of argument comes from the Roman Catholic catechism’s teaching on just war. As the Catholic writer John Zmirak noted in the aftermath of the Planned Parenthood shootings last years, the church does not allow nations to take up arms and go to war merely when they have a high moral cause on their side. Justice is necessary, but it is not sufficient: Peaceful means of ending the evil in question need to have been exhausted, there must be serious prospects of military success, and (crucially) “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
.. So long as your polity offers mechanisms for eventually changing unjust laws, it’s better to accept the system’s basic legitimacy and work within it for change than to take steps, violent or otherwise, that risk blowing the entire apparatus up.
.. But the Trump alternative is like a feckless war of choice in the service of some just-seeming end, with a commanding general who likes war crimes. It’s a ticket on a widening gyre, promising political catastrophe and moral corruption both, no matter what ideals seem to justify it.
Episode 223: How Did We Get Here? A History of the Religious Right
What really birthed the religious right? Why have black and white Christians swapped political parties over the last 60 years? Based on a class he’s teaching, co-host Skye Jethani takes us deep into the surprising history of 20th-century Christian political involvement. It’s a fascinating journey you won’t want to miss!
In 1976 Ford Adminstration threatened to revoke Bob Jones’s University’s Non-profit status, which started the religious right.
Background: 22:55
Bob Jones: 40:55
Thank You, Donald Trump
For decades, feminists have tried to stir outrage about how women are routinely groped, belittled, and weight-shamed. Yet Mr. Trump’s words and boasts have shown millions of voters, including people who believe feminism is a dirty word, what women endure every day.
This was supposed to be an election where Hillary Clinton had to convince voters that a woman had the fitness and temperament to be president.
Yet instead of worrying whether a woman is too emotional, impulsive and unqualified for high office, voters have been weighing whether that’s true of the man running to be president.
.. Indeed, Mr. Trump is not just a gift to feminists – he is breathing renewed life into a movement to redefine just what a real man is and ought to be.
.. The Access Hollywood tape induced a stream of defections from high-level Republicans who had not broken with him over the attack on a war hero’s family, the impugning of a judge of Mexican ancestry, or his threats to ban all Muslims from these shores.
.. This has turned out to be an election in which many of the old dog whistle issues about women – working motherhood, single mothers, a woman’s ability to be commander-in-chief, women’s assertiveness and self-confidence – have not seemed to resonate.
.. She did not shy away from defending late-term abortions – often a political minefield.