Here are just a few items that you may have missed in the past couple of days.
UPDATE: On top of all the stuff below, check out the top story in the March 13 New Yorker, which documents a smelly deal between Trump and a known corrupt official in Azerbaijan that the magazine says looks like a money-laundering operation for the Iran Revolutionary Guard.
For a good walk-through of the story, watch how Rachel Maddow explained it: http://on.msnbc.com/2mQhwKR
Item 1: President Trump received $16 million last month from a woman who describes herself as someone who connects people to business and government leaders in the United States, China and other places. A reasonable person might want to ask whether any of the money for this real estate transaction was coming from a foreign government.
If it is, that would be a clear violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which forbids the president from receiving any payment or gift from a foreign government. More details are reported in Mother Jones. The transaction is public record.
Item 2: More denials unravel. Attorney General Sessions was not the only Trump official who denied something that turned out to be false.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski insisted in an interview over the weekend that foreign policy advisor Carter Page had nothing to do with the Trump campaign and may be one of the many people falsely claiming an affiliation with the winning candidate. Former campaign spokesperson Jason Miller said he was “never” part of the campaign. Trump himself complained to aides over the weekend about how Page was being mentioned in recent stories about possible ties to Russia.
What’s odd about those denials is that it was Trump himself who introduced Page as one of his foreign policy advisers in March 2016, when he met with the Washington Post editorial board. Until then, hardly anyone had ever heard of the man.
Why it matters: Page had a long history of business involvement in Russia and participated in a news conference in Moscow in December where he disputed U.S. intelligence claims of Russian hacking against the Democratic National Committee.
Item 3: What’s the difference? The Trump Administration and its supporters seem to have trouble with words, but words have meanings, and meanings have consequences.
First, let’s look at this offensive, and plainly false message put out on Sunday by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah:
That is quite a huge stretch from the facts. While it is true that there were 9,500 people in the United States on student visas that the Department of Homeland Security wanted to track down for security concerns, there’s no way to say that the Obama administration “gave visas to potential terrrorists.” Here is a more complete story from the December hearing where Chaffetz called witnesses to explain the program and its shortcomings:
What is more important is that Chaffetz was tweeting out this stuff on Sunday, trying to distract from the Trumpstorm over the Russian hacking/spy investigation and his unsupported charges against President Obama. Even more important is that late last week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported that the Department of Homeland Security had completed a detailed, long-term analysis that concluded that immigrants were extremely unlikely to conduct terrorism in the United States. As law enforcement officials have learned from experience, domestic terrorists, right-wing extremists, natives who become radicalized are the ones who are the true threats. But the Trump administration is turning the attention away from them and making it an “us” versus “them” fight.
Sadly, good, hard-working, Americans like Srinivas Kuchibhotla are the victims. He was shot just because someone thought he was an “immigrant” and didn’t belong here. The man shouted “Get out of my country” as he pulled the trigger, killing the 32-year-old and destroying so many lives in the process.
Yet we have heard only a few words from the president or the White House about this or any of the other hate crimes that have occurred since January 20th. The fomenting of hate against immigrants continues unabated. Chief strategist Steve Bannon freely quotes from a white supremacy book, and that is somehow acceptable in 2017.
And finally, item 4: one would like to think that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development would know the difference between slavery and voluntary migration, but apparently not. He even suggested that they got compensated and were pursuing their dreams somehow. Wow.
Are these people really going to Make America Great Again?
Don’t forget to watch what they are really doing. Behind the scenes they have cut environmental regulations, proposed removing land protections (possibly even removing some national monument designations!) and relaxed requirements for government contractors to disclose when they violate labor or other regulations. There’s all kinds of favors being given to industry and cronies. Don’t be fooled, and don’t be distracted by what’s being announced in front of the cameras. The real news is behind the headlines.
