Last week found McConnell (R-Ky.) and Gorsuch traveling the Bluegrass State together for a tour of the senator’s alma maters.
.. Critics likened it to a “victory lap” for McConnell and said it amplified questions that were already being asked about Gorsuch’s independence from the Republicans
.. Trump and Republican leaders have celebrated Gorsuch’s confirmation as perhaps the signature accomplishment of the new administration
.. he has accepted an invitation to speak to a conservative legal scholarship group Thursday at Trump International Hotel in Washington.
.. But Gorsuch’s detractors see the speeches as hand-delivered thank-you notes, undermining attempts to present himself as an independent-minded justice.
“All of this indicates that he’s just ethically tone-deaf,” said Deborah L. Rhode
.. “Whether or not this breaks any explicit ethics rules, it is certainly not the behavior you’d expect from someone trying to ensure the appearance and reality of judicial independence and impartiality,”
.. “Chief Justice [John] Roberts likes to say that there aren’t Democratic or Republican justices. Gorsuch traveling around with the Republican Senate majority leader in what seems to be a sort of victory lap appears disturbingly out of step with the chief’s sentiment.”
.. The legislative muscle by McConnell and abundant praise from Trump is partly why Gorsuch’s appearances are seen through a partisan lens.
.. “One of my proudest moments was when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,’ ” McConnell told his constituents.
That left Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, hanging, and his chances ended with Trump’s election.
.. Facing calls to divest his business interests, Trump turned over management of the Trump Organization to his two oldest sons and vowed to reap no hotel profits during his presidency. But against the advice of top federal ethics officials, he has retained his ownership stake in the hotel, allowing him to eventually profit from the business.
.. “Is this any different from speeches and events Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg attends on a regular basis?” Adler asked in an interview with The Post, adding that Gorsuch’s schedule “might be a little unusual for a new justice, but I don’t think that’s out of order.”
Why most evangelicals don’t condemn Trump
Reply
For such critics, the only possible explanation for evangelicals’ continuing faith in Trump is some combination of ignorance and hypocrisy.
.. These voters — and almost all of them voted — see Trump’s flaws but perceive him as a fellow sinner willing to fight the forces of the establishment on their behalf... The barrage of negative press hardly rattled him or most of his colleagues, who see the mainstream media as anything but friendly to their opinions and their faith... “He has to fight all of them,” said the preacher, referring to the Democrats and the media.Another minister told me he appreciates that Trump has no hesitation taking on “the reprobate left” that considers the president “an enemy of their established power system.”.. Part of the decision by many evangelicals to support Trump for president was attributable to long-standing differences with liberal candidates over social issues. Evangelicals tend to share conservative positions on abortion, gun rights, border security and the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism,” as they usually make sure to phrase it. But more than anything, Trump’s specific pledges to the religious right got their attention.
.. So far, they think Trump has kept those promises. He has followed up with invitations to the White House, sought input on court appointments, stood firmly with Israel and signed an executive order expanding religious freedom in regard to political speech.
.. when Trump refuses to fully adopt the conclusion that climate change is due to man-made influences, he demonstrates an affinity with evangelical Christians who do not blindly accept every scientific theory... They also know they are considered by many to be superstitious or ignorant for adhering to their beliefs... Probably half the people in churches across the country defined as “evangelicals” were converted from lives that were even more unprincipled than the life Trump has led. Some experienced divorces, others used foul language, and many were addicted to drugs or alcohol... In most cases, no immediate miracle happened with regard to their behavior at the moment of their confessions of faith or their emergence from the baptismal waters. The only miracle they were promised was the application of the grace of Jesus Christ, which, under New Testament doctrine, washed away their sins.
Trump Raises an Army
When asked about pardoning former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio as Harvey was making landfall, Trump responded:
“Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally.”
.. Trump and the people who either shield or support him are locked in a relationship of reciprocation, like a ball of snakes. Everyone is using everyone else.
The oligarchs see Trump as a pathway to slashing regulations and cutting taxes for the rich. According to a July analysis by the Tax Policy Center, “Nearly 40 percent of the tax cut would flow to households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, giving those earners an average annual tax cut of around $270,000.”
- Establishment Republicans see him as a path to reversing the New Deal.
- Steve Bannon-ists see him as a path to the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
- All Republicans, but particularly the religious right, see him as a securer of conservative Supreme Court justices.
- The blue-collar Trump voters view him as a last chance to breathe life into the dying dream that waning industries and government-supported white cultural assurances can be revived.
- And the white nationalists, white supremacists, racists and Nazis — to the degree that they can be separated from the others — see him as a tool of vengeance and as an instrument of their defense.
Trump sees all these people who want to use him, and he’s using them right back. Trump made an industry out of selling conspicuous consumption. He sold the ideas that greed was good, luxury was aspirational and indulgence was innocent.
Trump’s supporters see him as vector; he sees them as market.
.. Marketing is how he has made his money and attained his infamy. That is why he is so obsessed with the media and crowds and polls (at least when he was doing well in them): He sees people, in his die-hard base at least, who have thoroughly bought into the product of Trumpism and he is doing everything to please them and make them repeat customers.
.. But in addition, and perhaps more sinisterly, I think that Trump is raising an army, whether or not he would describe it as such, and whether or not those being involved recognize their own conscription. This is not a traditional army, but it is an army no less.
.. How do you raise an army?
You do that by dividing America into tribes and, as “president,” aligning yourself with the most extreme tribe, all the while promoting militarization among people who support you.
You do it by worshiping military figures and talking in militaristic terms.
.. You cozy up to police unions and encourage police brutality.
.. You do this by rescinding Obama-era limits on the militarization of police departments
.. You do this by defending armed white nationalists and Nazis in Charlottesville.
You do this by defending monuments of Confederates who fought to preserve the noxious institution of slavery, and you do it by tweeting the coded language of white supremacists: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”
.. You do this by pardoning Arpaio, a man who joked about an Arizona jail being a “concentration camp,” signaling to people that racist brutality is permissible.
You also do this by attempting to reduce or marginalize populations of people opposed to you: Build a wall, return to failed drug policies that helped fuel mass incarceration, ban Muslims, curb even legal immigration, increase immigration arrests.
And why raise this army?
.. Should something emerge from the Robert Mueller investigation
.. Trump wants to position any attempt to remove him as a political coup. His efforts to delegitimize the press are all part of this because one day the press may have to deliver ruinous news.
.. Trump is playing an endgame. In the best-case scenario, these die-hards are future customers; in the worst, they are future confederates.
.. Trump is playing an endgame. In the best-case scenario, these die-hards are future customers; in the worst, they are future confederates.
Comment:
I too believe that Trump would not accept being removed from office — or even voted out. If he could brazenly declare Clinton’s popular victory of nearly 3 million votes to be mere fraud, then he will certainly brush aside any effort to neutralize him in 2018 or replace him out in 2020. I often (masochistically) survey right wing sites, and some post about the very scenario that Mr. Blow fears: they revere Trump with a near-religious loyalty that includes using their weapons in his service. As they frequently boast, they “outgun the liberals” and, with the military training that they also tout, the anti-Trump forces wouldn’t stand a chance, they declare. Some seem eager for armed conflict. They seem to think that the military itself would back Trump in such a struggle. They consider Trump adversaries to be so dangerous that they must be “militarily” conquered in order to save the country. It’s a concern when people speak this openly and fearlessly.
Neil Gorsuch Speech at Trump Hotel Raises Ethical Questions
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is scheduled to address a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington next month, less than two weeks before the court is set to hear arguments on Mr. Trump’s travel ban.
Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University, questioned the justice’s decision to speak at the hotel, which is at issue in lower-court cases challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr. Trump’s companies.
.. “It’s a terrible signal for this group to be holding their meeting at the Trump International Hotel and for a Supreme Court justice to legitimate it by attending,” she said. “It just violates basic ethical principles about conflicts of interest.”
.. Appearances by justices before groups with political leanings are not unusual. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, all members of the court’s liberal wing, have spoken before the American Constitution Society, a liberal group.
.. On the other hand, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., members of the court’s conservative wing, have addressed the Federalist Society, a conservative group.
There is very little crossover. “I could find no record of a sitting liberal Supreme Court justice addressing the Federalist Society annual meeting or a sitting conservative Supreme Court justice addressing the American Constitution Society annual meeting,” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a 2016 study.