It’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom

I’ve heard lots of news stories about the nasty guy’s trip to the Saudi Arabia and nearby rich countries. One story described about how the locals softened him up – they put a great deal of pageantry into their greeting ceremonies. The nasty guy loves pomp directed at him. Makes him feel important. Michel Martin and Aya Batrawy of NPR discussed the nasty guy’s time in Saudi Arabia. I worked from the transcript. It’s all about getting deals done. If the Saudis deliver on weapons purchases and investments in the US the nasty guy will help with their security. Add to that Eric Nasty was in the region less than two weeks ago to start new projects – a branded hotel in one country, a golf course in another. There’s also money flowing into the family crypto business. All this sounds like a great deal of money for the nasty guy plus some money for the US. The news story version of this piece also mentions the contingent of big business leaders who went with him, leaders of Tesla and SpaceX, Planatir, OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Coca-Cola, Boeing, weapons companies, and asset management companies. Some of the deals are listed, all together Saudi Arabia would invest at least $600 billion in the US over four years. This version has photos of some of the greeting ceremonies. They did one better than the red carpet. This one is lilac. The big story out of that trip is the offer of a jumbo jet to the nasty guy, a gift from the ruling family of Qatar. It is described as a flying palace, costing about $400 million. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos fills in the many details. The plane could be used as Air Force One through the remainder of his term, then would be turned over to the foundation that would build his presidential library, meaning he would use it as a personal plane. Yeah, there is a great deal of pushback from Democrats and some Republicans. This gift violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution barring accepting gifts from a foreign state without Congressional approval. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said:

Nothing says “America First” like Air Force One, brought to you by Qatar. It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.

There are two existing jets used as Air Force One. Both are more than 30 years old. Two replacements are on the way, but the deal was structured so that Boeing is taking a loss of billions of dollars. They won’t be delivered until 2027-2028. The two existing jets are heavily modified to be protection and command center in the air during nuclear war. That’s why the replacements are delayed. The Qatari gift plane won’t have any of that and presidential security must assume it is bugged. I’ve heard that to be allowed for use by the nasty guy it must be completely disassembled and inspected. The free gift isn’t so free. Kathleen Clark of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis is an expert on government ethics. She accused the nasty guy of exploiting governmental power, not to push policy, but for personal wealth. She said this gift is the “logical, inevitable, unfortunate consequence of Congress and the Supreme Court refusing to enforce” the Emoluments Clause. The NPR news article above includes this quote from the nasty guy:

I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, “No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.”

Translation: I would be stupid to refuse this bright shiny bribe. Oliver Willis of Kos titled a post “Trump is very proud of himself for selling access to the White House.” He begins it with: “President Donald Trump is openly using the White House to accept personal bribes, providing access and influence over his presidency.” The two recent examples Willis used are (1) the offer of a private dinner at the White House to the winner of an auction of his cryptocurrency and (2) this offer of a jet. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup on Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp and showing a headline from The Onion: “Man Can’t Believe He Has To Download Stupid App Just To Bribe President.” There are also many cartoons about the plane gift. One by Dave Granlund showing Clarence Thomas envious because all he got was a $270,000 RV. In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman, who quoted an ABC discussion of a memo from AG Pam Bondi:

Both the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery, the sources said. Bondi's legal analysis also says it does not run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign gifts because the plane is not being given to an individual, but rather to the United States Air Force and, eventually, to the presidential library foundation, the sources said.

How much sarcasm can I pour into a response of, “Sure”? From Brian Stelter in the Reliable Sources newsletter.

Some of Trump's staunchest supporters are among the loudest critics of his plan to accept a jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One. I don't think I've seen this much MAGA media pushback since Trump retook power.

From Judd Legum of Popular Information:

Qatar is not acting out of altruism. It wants policy concessions from the U.S. government to bolster its economic and national security interests. Trump is brazenly exploiting those needs to line his pockets.

In the comments are many more cartoons about the plane. In today’s roundup Dworkin started with a quote from The Atlantic:

Even in Washington, a capital now numbed to scandals that were once unthinkable, the idea of accepting the jet is jaw-dropping. Trump’s second administration is yet again displaying a disregard for norms and for traditional legal and political guardrails around elected office—this time at a truly gargantuan scale. Trump’s team has said it believes that the gift would be legal because it would be donated to the Department of Defense (and then to the presidential library). But federal law prohibits government workers from accepting a gift larger than $20 at any one time from any person. Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who once commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told us that he couldn’t “accept a lunch at the Capital Grille.” Former federal employees shared similar reactions on social media.

Dworkin included a tweet from San Stein, which included a link to an article on The Bulwark. The title and subtitle of the article are:

Trump Wants His Corruption to Be Public Intimidation and extortion depends on the targets knowing what price they may pay.

From Mother Jones, talking first about Kash Patel, head of the FBI, and about Qatari influence:

Patel is just one of several top Trump administration aides who have had financial ties to this Arab monarchy. Susan Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, worked for a lobbying firm that represented Qatar. Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for the Qataris. Mike Huckabee, now US Ambassador to Israel, was paid $50,000 to visit Qatar in 2018. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, also has pocketed money from Qatar. In 2023, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund bought the Park Lane Hotel from Witkoff’s company in a $623 million deal. The Trump Organization itself recently struck a deal to develop a luxury golf resort in Qatar. And now Qatar is considering handing as a gift to Trump a jumbo airliner worth about $400 million for Trump to use as Air Force One.

David Beard tweeted the results of a poll done by the conservative New York Post with the question “Should Trump take a $400 million jet from Qatar?” It showed 78.5% of respondents chose “No, don’t trust Qatar.” Paul Waldman of The Cross Section talked about how Democrats should talk to the country. In addition of explaining how bad the big budget bill in Congress is they should add a simple message, “Republicans Hate You.” Down in the comments exlrrp posted a few memes prompted by a new book out saying Joe Biden was in greater mental decline than people knew. A lot of Democrats are calling the book a cheap shot. One of the memes posted here says:

I don’t want to read about a former President’s mental decline because a journalist got a book deal. I want to read a report about the current President’s mental decline by a journalist brave enough to speak out now!

exlrrp added, “I'd rather have Biden as he was than Trump as he is.”

Elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious

Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent editorial writer wrote about how Republicans have cheated their way into the White House for more than a half century. That is a long coup. Hartmann wrote the books, The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of the War On Voting. Hartmann wrote that in 2024 “4 million Americans were either denied their right to vote or their votes were discarded.” He worked from info by Greg Palast and the US Elections Assistance Commission. 4.7 million voters were purged from voter rolls, some through “vigilante” vote fraud hunters given lists of who to challenge. Over 2.1 million mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors. 1.2 million provisional ballots were rejected. These are mostly ballots of people who didn’t have the proper ID when they got to their polling place or their name was purged. They voted on provisional ballots and told their registration would be checked. They were usually not told that unless they went to the clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, their ballot was likely thrown out. In Georgia Republicans cut the number of ballot drop boxes by 75%, but only in black majority counties. All these were not isolated incidents, they were part of a coordinated national strategy. The more conservative numbers of suppressed votes was at least 2.3% or over 3,500,000 votes. Harris would have beat the nasty guy by 1.2 million votes, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College. This isn’t speculation. This has documented evidence. It’s what Republican officials designed their laws to do. Now for the history. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson had a tentative agreement for lasting peace in Vietnam. Nixon used envoys to tell the corrupt South Vietnamese politicians that if they held off signing when he became president he would give them a richer deal. The failure of the peace deal is why Humphrey lost and Nixon won. But Nixon didn’t sweeten the pot. The war went on for another five years with 22,000 more American soldiers dead and more than a million Vietnamese dead. Johnson called Nixon’s action treason. In 1980 Ronald Reagan did something similar to Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan worked out a deal with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Komeini to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election in exchange for spare parts for the American weapons the deposed Shah had previously purchased. A second act of treason. Carter lost his second term and Reagan won. That spare parts deal continued into the “Iran Contra” scandal. If I remember right low level operatives, like Oliver North, went to jail, but Reagan was merely embarrassed. George HW Bush didn’t use treasonous means to get into office, but he did use racism – the Willie Horton ads – and he did kill investigations to protect Reagan, for whom he had been VP. But, in a sense, if Reagan hadn’t done that treasonous act Bush I would not have been president, making him illegitimate. That brings us to George W Bush. His brother (presumably Jeb) purged 57,000 black voters from the rolls in Florida. That made Florida too close to call (Bush was up by less than 600 votes), prompting five justices of the Supreme Court to award the presidency to Bush, rather than Al Gore. The news didn’t give much notice that Antonin Scalia’s son worked for the law firm defending Bush II (Scalia didn’t recuse) and Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence, was paid to work on the Bush transition team (Clarence didn’t recuse either). A year later a consortium of newspapers did their own recount and concluded Gore had won. No one noticed that news because the 9/11 attacks happened two months before. In 2004 to get reelected, Bush II became a “wartime president.” Bush I became that in a three-day war and Junior concluded that was the best way to have a two-term presidency (he said his father lost in 1992 because he wasted the advantage). And to be a wartime president, he lied. Back in 1991 I was a fan of Bush I (this was before Republicans became explicitly anti-gay and I learned how awful Reagan had been). Then I saw that Papa Bush accumulated all this political capital – and did nothing with it. So, yeah, he wasted the advantage. Back to Junior. His lies got us into war with Iraq and Afghanistan. And he won a second term (though I heard what happened in Ohio that year was skeezy). Those lies also cost 900,000 Iraqi and 7,000 American lives (though veterans are still committing suicide) and added $8 trillion to the national debt. And in 2016 the nasty guy benefited from: Republicans using Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of voters, mostly people of color. Russian and other foreign actors flooding social media in support of him. Paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet. Talking daily about Hillary Clinton’s emails, including an empty accusation the week before the election. The cost of the nasty guy’s first term was: Unnecessary COVID deaths. Iran would still be in compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal. The rich would not have gotten another $2 trillion in tax cuts. The Supreme Court would not have been stolen.

America has ignored GOP crimes to seize and hold the White House long enough. The immunity Ford gave Nixon has echoed down through the decades, leading to a packed Supreme Court that gave new immunity to Trump and two unnecessary and illegal wars (not to mention tax cuts for billionaires that have gutted our middle class). It’s time, at long last, to tell America the true story of Republican electoral crimes.

In the comments citixen said that Hartmann forgot REDMAP, the Republican effort in 2011 to gerrymander as many states as they controlled to get maximum Republican representation. Michigan was one of those states (isn’t anymore). While citixen has a point, the article was about presidents, not Congress or legislatures. Rambler 797 pointed out that in those key years Democrats had incumbent problems. 1968 – Support for the Vietnam war dropped and Humphrey was not advocating change. 1980 – Support for Carter dropped because of stagflation. 2000 – Gore was awkward, a climate radical, and squandered incumbent advantages of being Clinton’s VP. 2004 – In a time of dropping support for the Iraq war Kerry ran as a War Hero. 2016 – Clinton’s support was already sagging in Midwest working class states. 2024 – Support for Biden collapsed, Harris lost ground with working class and immigrants, and the party was split over Gaza. And why did Bush I lose in 1992, McCain in 2008, or the nasty guy in 2020? A big reason why those three lost is the country was quite fed up and tired of them and their predecessors. Also, one premise of Republican cheating is that the election would be too close or they would lose without it. That implies the prospects of those Democratic losers were better than Rambler797 says they were, and without that meddling Democrats would have won. Commenter democratos says Hartmann used the words “treason” and “traitor” without reference to their legal definitions. Ximena Bustillo of NPR reported on white South African refugees arriving in the US. These are the first refugees the nasty guy’s administration has allowed in and more are expected. Refugees from other countries are on hold. The nasty guy says they are welcome here because of the violence they faced back home. Of course, the question: The refugees from Afghanistan didn’t face violence and won’t if they return? Many Afghan refugees were stuck abroad after being approved for travel when the nasty guy changed the rules. A judge ordered the administration to restart the refugee program. The State Department says they’re still considering it (meaning, they are defying a judge’s orders). Michel Martin of NPR talked to Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on the denomination’s decision to not help resettle Afrikaners. It will end its long partnership with the US government to support migrants. Rowe said the decision is straightforward. They are committed to racial justice. They are a sister church to the Anglican Church of South Africa, home church to Archbishop Desmond Tutu who fought against the racism of Apartheid. They are saddened and ashamed because of the refugees who are being denied entrance, especially those who worked with the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fast-tracking Afrikaners is not morally just. Rowe said that the nasty guy seems to think some people, white people, are more valuable than others, people of color. That doesn’t fit with the morals of the Episcopal Church. Since 1980 the Episcopal Church has helped resettle more than 100,000 refugees. Since January their program has been shut down, no refugees coming to the US. Helping Afrikaners ahead of others doesn’t make sense. They will continue to work with migrants and the most vulnerable, though not as partners with the US government. Alix Breeden of Kos talked about why the Afrikaners wanted to come to the US. They, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau have been spreading the false narrative they had endured racial discrimination and violence from the government of black South Africans. They also feared their property would be seized without compensation. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa disputed that narrative, saying they are not being persecuted, hounded, nor treated badly. They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes directed by their constitution. South Africa is implementing the Expropriation Act, which will redistribute some land owned by white farmers to black farmers. This is in response to Apartheid, under which black farmers were not allowed to own land and were driven into extreme poverty. This Act seeks to redress the land imbalance. And as the nasty guy’s administration welcomes white Afrikaners, they ended the Temporary Protected Status of Afghans. They said in a sense Afghanistan is all better now, it is safe to go back. Though it isn’t. Landau was asked why Afrikaners are welcome and Afghans are not. He replied that a criteria was “they could be assimilated easily into our country.” Ooh, that’s a troublesome word. Ask American Natives what assimilation got them. But what that answer is saying is, “We the administration get to decide who we will welcome and who we won’t.” I kept waiting for some news report would say the reason the nasty guy welcomed the Afrikaners and not others is because they are just as racist as he is. Alas, none that I read put it that bluntly. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote the nasty guy is doing a good job of pissing off religious groups. With this effort he annoyed the Episcopal Church. He pissed off the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by refusing to pay $13 million the denomination had already spent on refugee resettlement. They sued, lost, and appealed. Public-private partnerships don’t work when the public funding is removed. Polling shows Evangelical Christians broadly support general refugee resettlement and are annoyed it is being limited to White South Africans. I said the Afrikaners are racist? Down in the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted:

WOW. The Trump admin said they will review social media and deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic claims. They're even trying to deport people with green cards on alleged claims of antisemitism. Anyway, here's a tweet from an Afrikaner they flew here on Monday.

That Afrikaner is Charl Kleinhaus, whose icon is a Christian cross. He tweeted:

Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group they are not Gods chosen like to believe they are. Where is the Temple that must be their concern and leave us alone we all believe in the God of Abraham, Moses and Jacob! I almost said something ugly ...

Not “almost.” And... Hey Big Guy! You said you would deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic things? Look right here! Back to the body of the pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a few interesting quotes. First, Catie Edmondson and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times on the Republican controlled House trying to get a budget reconciliation bill passed by Memorial Day:

Even as the committees approved their slices of the plan in party-line votes, House Republican leaders faced dissent in their ranks that could delay or derail passage. Conservative lawmakers have argued the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which stopped short of an overhaul in an effort to protect vulnerable Republicans, do not go far enough. And Republicans from high-tax states like New York were furious about a provision that would increase the limit on the state and local tax deduction to $30,000 from $10,000, a cap they regard as far too low and which was still being negotiated. The plan is also facing Republican opposition in the Senate. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said the current bill is fiscally irresponsible. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she opposes at least one Medicaid provision in the legislation. And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri described the bill’s changes to the government health program for the poor as a nonstarter, saying they amounted to “taxing the poor to give to the rich.”

Yeah, a Republican said that. Paul Krugman, writing in his own Substack about cuts in support for renewable energy:

The purpose of these cuts, sadism aside, would be to partially offset the cost of huge tax cuts for the rich — cuts that would still explode the budget deficit. The cruelty is mind-boggling. In fact, I have both a suggestion and a prediction for major media organizations: I’d like to see them do focus groups with ordinary voters, describing these plans. My prediction, based on what we’ve seen in the past, is that many voters will simply refuse to believe the policy descriptions, insisting that elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious. But they can be and are.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of The Contrarian wrote about the “pink tax.” But the excerpt didn’t sort out whether this “tax” is actually imposed by the government or just a pervasive price differential practiced by corporations. I think it’s the latter. The pink tax refers to gender-based pricing. Things marketed to girls and women are priced higher than the corresponding product for men and boys. Examples are toys, bikes, scooters, shampoo, shaving gear, body lotion, and deodorant.

He caved on Chinese tariffs, got nothing but drama

Since my last major update on Friday I accumulated 28 browser tabs of things I want to share. I will get to only a few of them today and some I may decide to close. Mariel Padilla of The 19th, in an article posted on Daily Kos, wrote about Pope Leo’s views on a few topics. We don’t yet know how he feels about these things as pope. Padilla had to work with the most recent comments, usually years old.

In speaking to bishops in 2012, he criticized Western news media for cultivating “sympathy” at odds with gospel including “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

He has not endorsed or opposed rules to bless same-sex unions within the Catholic Church. Leo seems to be aligned with Francis on migrant rights. Leo has not made clear his views on fertility issues – abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, or surrogacy. The church has opposed them. Francis was critical of surrogacy, voiced concerns about IVF, and otherwise avoided the topic. On climate change Leo said we needed to move from words to action. The pundit roundup for May 10, complied by Greg Dworkin for Kos, quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post, which essentially said that with the election Leo, there is no going back from the progressive views of Francis. A ways into the comments are a few cartoons about Leo. One by Rod Emmerson shows white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Inside two cardinals are at the stove that produced that smoke. They’re burning a MAGA hat. One says, “If they think Leo is too woke, wait until they find out about Jesus.” From what I’ve seen the MAGA people are working really hard not to find out about Jesus. An Associated Press article posted on Kos mentioned that Louis DeStroy, postmaster since 2021 resigned in March. Yay! And why didn’t I hear about it back then? But the cheering won’t be very loud. His replacement isn’t any better. Maybe worse. Not with the nasty guy where he is. The new guy is David Steiner. He had been the CEO of the nation’s largest waste management company and is currently on the board of FedEx. Yeah, that right there is a conflict of interest and a strong indication the goal is to privatize the Postal Service (now a mostly self-funded public institution). And a likely outcome of that move is to end “universal service” in which the USPS is obligated to deliver to every address, even in costly remote areas (of course, in some remote areas the closest they get is the local post office, and some of those are in jeopardy). The postal union is, of course, protesting the appointment. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy caved on his tariffs with China, lowering them from 145% to 30%. China also reduced its tariffs on the US, though I don’t see that the nasty guy got anything more from the Chinese. He did it to appease the stock market. But 30% is still high and will still raise prices. Saying the high rates are paused for only 90 days doesn’t ended the dreaded economic “uncertainty” – already proposed as the economic word of the year. Since so many companies waited to ship anything while the 145% rate was in effect and wanting to get orders shipped before rates rise again in 90 days there is now be a big demand for shipping, leading to snarls in supply chains (see what happened in 2021), and increased shipping costs. And all that drama was unnecessary.