If Churchill tweeted, we’d be reading very different tweets from those we read from the president and other political leaders today. I don’t suggest what he would say. No one can know that. But I do know how he would go about it — and I suggest that his methods offer an excellent example for today’s leaders.
.. First, Churchill avoided repaying vilification in kind. Instead he used humor, irony, plays on words. This lowered the temperature and took the sting out of debate.
.. Blunting insults with humor let Churchill off the hook. In the ensuing laughter, people forgot that he’d never responded to the accusation. “I have to measure the length of the response to any question by the worth, meaning, and significance of that question,” he said to an angry inquisitor — which avoided any answer at all.
.. Second, Churchill rarely attacked someone personally in public, though he didn’t hesitate to lampoon their well-known traits. During a loquacious speech by an MP who questioned his veracity, judgment, and even morals, Churchill interrupted: “I can well understand the honorable member speaking for practice, which he badly needs.”
.. in avoiding jibes, he did not even defend himself. The defense would come later, in a carefully worded statement at a time of his choosing. This was much more gratifying than outbursts in the Twitterverse.
.. Third, Churchill would often use interesting allegories or images rather than vicious barbs when confronted by opponents.
.. Lastly — and perhaps most important — even though the political divide was as wide in his time as in ours, Churchill fostered respect and collegiality. Intrinsic to his methods was an underlying respect for opponents. To him they were not enemies, merely honorable people who were mistaken.
So that’s why Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants the cameras off
It’s easy to see why Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants the TV cameras off during her White House news briefings.
.. But above all is a more simple explanation: Sanders has no earthly idea what’s going on in the White House she purports to represent.
.. The Trump White House move to have fewer briefings and to move them off camera is just a symptom. The real problem is that the people giving the briefings don’t have a clue; they can’t, as Trump put it, “stand at podium with perfect accuracy.”.. The humiliations that ruined Sean Spicer will do the same to Sanders or whoever fills the role. Trump doesn’t seem to tell his people what he’s doing, if he knows himself. ABC News’s Jon Karl published a list last month of 26 times Sanders and Spicer said they would “get back to you” but never did. There are, surely, many more... She brought out Marc Short, Trump’s legislative director, to deliver a diversionary statement about Democrats’ “needless obstruction” of Trump’s nominees. But the distraction failed when half a dozen reporters used the opportunity to quiz Short about the floundering effort in the Senate to pass Trumpcare... Then came a barrage of questions about Donald Jr.’s newly reported meeting with the Russians, which negated, as CBS’s Major Garrett noted, the White House’s “long history of blanket denials” that there had been campaign contacts with the Russians... “There was simply no collusion,” she said, eyebrow cocked and lip corner raised.“That’s a different question,” Garrett pointed out... She also declined to echo Trump’s tweeted suggestion Monday morning that former FBI director James Comey had leaked classified information — which means he would have perjured himself when he said he didn’t. “Uh, I think there are a lot of questions out there and a lot of reports,” Sanders demurred.
.. In fairness to Sanders, there are no good answers to these questions. Trump, with his reckless tweets and nonsense claims, leaves his mouthpieces in an impossible position. No less an authority than former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said after Trump’s vulgar tweet about Mika Brzezinski that “he makes my daughter’s job very difficult.”
But that’s no excuse. Sanders has agreed to interpret the nonsensical and to rationalize the indefensible. Like Spicer, she will fail.
y Trump is seeing how hard it can be to land the ‘ultimate’ deal between Israel and the Palestinians
“There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians — none whatsoever,” Trump said in April.
.. The Abbas video is similar to others produced by Israel and shown to U.S. officials in the past, U.S. and Israeli officials said. But this one appeared aimed at discrediting Abbas personally and triggering an “emotional response” from Trump on the eve of his meeting with the aging Palestinian leader, said a senior U.S. official briefed on the meeting.
.. Trump is inexperienced even if he’s not naive, veterans of past peace efforts said. He is now having a “health-care moment,” in which he realizes that something that looked doable on paper turns out to be far more complicated than he first imagined, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator.
“Who knew it would be so hard and complicated?” Levy joked.
.. “Netanyahu’s game plan is not new — he attempts to shift the focus onto diversions and distractions that he hopes will make the Palestinians look bad and will keep the pressure off him when it comes to offering something on the substance of a peace deal,” Levy said. Hence the Israeli focus on incitement and Palestinian payments to the families of prisoners accused of violence against Israelis, he said.
Palestinian officials claim that many of the arrests are the result of opposition to illegal occupation and that they have a duty to support the families of those jailed.
Trump is hunkering down inside his Fox-Breitbart echo chamber
Rather than avoid addressing the investigation via Twitter, particularly after White House aides suggested that the president might have lawyers vet his tweets, Trump is again seeking to use Twitter to divert attention from the investigation. It’s a sign Trump cannot be restrained from his impulsive Twitter use, and that he’s going to rely on it to draw attention to coverage he considers (somehow) favorable.
.. It is probably not an accident that Trump suddenly tweeted about Page early this morning. That’s because yesterday brought a barrage of negative Russia-related news: CNN reported that U.S. intelligence intercepted Russian communications with Russians saying that had “derogatory” financial information that could give them leverage over Trump and his inner circle.
.. The closer the investigation gets to the full story, the more Trump retreats into the Breitbart-Fox-and-Friends bubble. Inside this bubble, it is a truism that there is a “deep state” conspiracy theory
.. he’s really trying to blind himself, and his followers, from the scandal engulfing him.