Tariffs are Donald Trump taxes on American citizens

Where are the free trade Republicans?

An echo opinion letter published in the Denver Post:

Tariffs! A new JP Morgan analysis predicts that the average American family will shoulder $1,000 per year, as a result of Donald Trump’s tariffs with China and the failed (stupid) trade war. 

These are taxes that our so-called lowering-taxes Republicans, including Sen. Cory Gardner, appear to ignore. They do no help to us, and it appears that rural Coloradans — especially our hardworking farmers and ranchers — will be hurt the most.

Apparently, China tariffs already in place are expected to cost the average household $600, per year!  Really, the only ones who have benefited from the huge reduction of taxes and the huge increase of the deficit are the rich, such as Trump himself and corporations. And it appears that Trump and Gardner’s answer to reduce the deficit is to take food assistance (food stamps) away from 90,000, people in Colorado, including about 11,000 children. Trump and Gardner are not working to help Colorado, except for the rich.

Wayne Wathen, Highlands Ranch, Colorado

What to do when Donald Trump orders you out of China? (Oh paaaaleeze!)

Excerpts from the Bonner Report! Bonner and Partners

"Herewith a confession: We have an office in Beijing. And we have been ordered by the president to pack up and leave. What to do? Stay tuned…"~ Bill Bonner 

Chosen One

The chosen one Church of the Donald!

Writing from Poitou, France (Bonner) ~ POTUS (aka tRump!) told the world that he is the “chosen one” to deal with the China issue (whatever the issue is…), and then he tweeted a proclamation…

Henceforth, American businesses are “ordered” to withdraw from China, and they shall have no truck with the Middle Kingdom, unless and until, of course, their lobbyists pay off the appropriate Deep State fixer.

Then, over the weekend, Mr. Trump let fly that he had regrets about his China trade war.

The press corps was shocked; this was the first time Mr. Trump showed a hint of doubt or reflection.

But a White House press secretary quickly clarified that the president regrets not having hit the Chinese harder!
Divine Right

One of the remarkable features of modern American democracy is that a president may win with the support of only about a third of adults… but then he feels entitled to tell the other two thirds what to do.

Back in the days of kings and queens, a monarch justified his power by claiming a “divine right” – given to him by God.

Donald Trump "the chosen one" syndrome

Now, he asserts a more profane source of power, a majority vote.

On the evidence, the chosen ones of democracy are no better leaders than the accidents of birth that gave us the Sun King (Louis XIV) or Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.

Venezuela elected its nutty government; Argentina’s recent election led to an immediate 50% drop in stock prices. Hitler won 44% of the popular vote in 1932. (Trump got 46% in 2016.)

It was a genetic lottery that gave us King Charles VI of France, who refused to bathe and believed he was made of glass, and Ferdinand I of Austria, who reportedly never opened his mouth except to ask for dumplings.

But the ballot box gave us George Dubya Bush; in apparent revenge for an attack on New York, he started a $5 trillion war against a country that had nothing to do with it.
Murderous Mischief

As far as we know, the voters have never rejected a candidate because he was too stupid, too ignorant, or too malevolent.

Instead, they are like turkeys voting to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Nor does there seem to be any limit to the zany and murderous mischief a leader will get up to.

Stalin personally approved the lists of thousands who would be rounded up and sent to the gulags.

And now, Trump subcontracts the work of keeping 500,000 people on the “sanctioned” list, where – without the benefit of formal charges or their day in court – they are cut off from travel, credit, and commerce.

More Fake Money

This brings us to the latest escalation of the trade war with China.

Mr. Trump’s main reelection selling point is the economy. People think it is doing well. And to maintain that illusion, Mr. Trump needs to put more fake money into the system.

How?

Another tax cut? There is no way Nancy Pelosi’s House is going to agree to another tax cut before the election. The Democrats want the economy to be sour in 2020… not robust.

Big infrastructure projects? Again, the Democrats will do nothing to boost the economy before the election. They will hope to win in 2020 and then roll out their own boondoggles.

Rate cuts? Yes, rate cuts can put some silicone in the sagging flesh of an aging bull market, but member banks and speculators can already borrow at or near the inflation rate. A few basis points lower is not going to make much difference to the economy.

Also, Federal Reserve Chief Jay Powell is beginning to show some backbone.

Again last week, the president blamed stock market volatility on the Fed. But Powell fired back that the trade war was the cause.
Mock Battle

No tax cut, no big boondoggles, not much from the Fed… What does that leave?

The China trade war!
This is a battle Trump needs to win. And wait… what’s this? This morning, Mr. Trump says trade talks will resume! Stocks are going back up!

Who could have seen that coming?

So, we stick with our prediction: Trump will not go Full Retard. Instead, he will settle up with the Chinese before the 2020 election.

A further prediction: That won’t stop a recession or a crash on Wall Street.

Regards,



Bill

P.S. Herewith a confession: We have an office in Beijing. And we have been ordered by the president to pack up and leave. What to do? Stay tuned…

Why would Donald Trump put forth this terrible and unfair policy discriminating to children born to military families?

Where is Senator Ted Cruz?  He was born in Canada in a Canadian hospital and his birth was paid for by the Canadian health care system.  He should lead the opposition to this terrible policy primarily because his esteemed colleague the late Senator John McCain would have been subject to this unfair, cruel and totally unnecessary policy.  Americans must kick Donald Trump out of the Oval Office where he is directing horrific policies that are harming our citizens. Children have no control whatsoever about where they are born!  Moreover, military families have zero influence about where their spouses will receive orders to be stationed.

Opinion- Children of U.S. troops born overseas must now apply to become citizens? That's ridiculous!

Echo by E.J. Montini published in the Arizona Republic

The Trump administration has decided that children born to U.S. service members and government employees stationed overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States.

Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? Sure.

But this is right up there among the most ridiculous and cruel.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made the announcement Wednesday, saying that children born to service members and other government employees at military hospitals and other locales outside the country will no longer automatically be considered U.S. citizens. Instead, their parents will have to apply for naturalization.

Senator John McCain, US Navy veteran and presidential candidate (1936-2018)- born in Panama, while his father was serving in the US Military.

Arizona is home to thousands of full-time and part-time military personnel, many of whom eventually serve overseas.
Not only would this new citizenship rule be an unnecessary hassle for individuals serving their country, but it may have the effect of preventing the children of government employees and military personnel from becoming president of the United States, depending upon how the Constitution is interpreted.

Still citizens, but with limits?

The founders, under Article II, Section 1, said that in order to be president a person had to be 35 years old, to have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years, and be a “natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.”

Since there are no longer any naturalized citizens who were around at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, military kids could be out.

If this rule were to have applied in 1936, a future U.S. senator named John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, might not have been eligible to run for president.

At least one member of Arizona's congressional delegation, himself a veteran, noticed this. Tweeting:

FYI under this situation Senator John McCain would not have been eligible to run for President. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1166815383959085056 …

This, of course, makes no sense.

I know, not shocking.

What would be shocking is if Congress didn’t step in and figure out a solution.  Either that, or limiting the citizenship rights the children of those who serve could become U.S. policy.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Donald Trump's stupid trade war is loosing

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/08/30/texas-is-losing-in-trump-s-trade-war-with-china/?utm_source=pushy

Dallas is calling!  Texas speaks!

Hello White House! Wake up call to the Trump campaign!

Honestly, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (sorry for the cliche) to realize that Donald Trump has never moved beyond his apprentice campaign mode in 2015-16, and into leadership.  His promise to have Mexico pay for a ghost wall that the Mexicans will absolutely not fund and his stupidity about how to leverage trade deals are examples of the delusional Donald Trump political poke bag. Here is a very harsh editorial from Texas!  

DALLAS, Texas editorial- Of all the reckless and ill-advised statements Donald Trump has made during his presidency, perhaps the one he’ll regret most is his March 2018 tweet saying “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” 

Most economists on the left and right would agree that they are neither, and, moreover, the casualties are generally the farmers, manufacturers and consumers that fuel a healthy economy.

The reality on the ground bears this out. In his increasingly damaging trade dispute with China, Trump has now slapped tariffs on $550 billion worth of Chinese imports while Beijing has retaliated with tariffs on $185 billion in U.S. imports. China's list of U.S. products now subject to increased levies includes electronics, cars and auto parts, aircraft and parts, machinery, crude oil, aluminum and steel products, and nearly everything grown or raised on a U.S. farm or ranch.

Last Friday, after China announced plans to hike tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. goods beginning on Sept. 1, Trump responded with a pledge to raise existing U.S. tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese products from 25% to 30% on Oct. 1, while an additional $300 billion in Chinese goods will be taxed at 15%, up from 10%, on Sept. 1. Tit-for-tat protectionist folly at its worst.

Then, in what seemed to be a gross misinterpretation of the powers of the presidency, Trump tweeted that U.S. companies “are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.” Not surprisingly, the Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P 500 all plunged more than 2% on fears that Trump’s “easy to win” trade war might end the bull market and tip the U.S. into recession.

The markets have regained their composure since Friday. But Wall Street isn't Main Street, and that's where the trade war is taking no prisoners. As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made painfully clear, "American businesses and consumers are bearing the brunt of the global trade war. By now, it's plain to see that tariffs are inflicting harm on the American economy and will continue to do so unless the administration changes course."

In Texas alone, where more than 3 million jobs are supported by global trade, $10 billion in state exports are targeted for retaliation from China. Among the hardest hit are liquified propane, with $1.7 billion worth exported annually to China; grain sorghum, with $494 million exported annually to China; and cotton, with $477 million exported annually to China. And those numbers don't reflect last week's salvo of retaliatory Chinese tariffs.

Small, family-owned business are among the hardest hit, especially those that export to or import goods from China. But the toll is beginning to be felt by giants like Apple and Caterpillar, who've seen their stock values tumble as stiff tariffs on technology and machinery are becoming a reality.

But in Texas, a state with more farms and ranches than any other, no one is getting hit as hard as those in the ag industry. In our state and across the country, producers of cotton, soybeans, corn, feed grains and other crops are struggling financially with farm loan bankruptcies and delinquenciesspiking recently due in part to poor weather but also the intensifying trade war.

China's announcement earlier this month that its state-owned enterprises will cease buying any agricultural products from the U.S. was described by American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall as a "body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by."

According to Duvall, “Exports to China were down by $1.3 billion during the first half of the year.” Now, he says American farmers “stand to lose all of what was a $9.1 billion market in 2018, which was down sharply from the $19.5 billion U.S. farmers exported to China in 2017.”

Duvall said that those in the agricultural industry are “grateful for the Market Facilitation Program payments many farmers and ranchers have received, allowing them to continue farming during this difficult time. Even so, we know that aid cannot last forever. We urge negotiators to redouble their efforts to arrive at an agreement, and quickly. Exports ensure farmers will continue to supply safe, healthful and affordable food for families here and around the world.”

In other words, trade not aid is what farmers — and the rest of American businesses, whether large or small — need to not just survive but thrive in the global marketplace. Yes, China has been a bad actor and violated World Trade Organization rules and the norms of international trade, especially in regard to intellectual property rights and forced technology transfers.

But Trump's scorched-earth negotiating style could be pushing China further away from international norms when the goal is just the opposite. It's times like this that we wish the U.S. had not pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trading bloc that, with U.S. leadership, would have had more carrots and sticks in its arsenal than Trump going it alone.

Perhaps the best we can hope for under this administration is for the president to tire of his trade war with China, claim victory as he did with the rewritten United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and move on. For the sake of the Texas (and U.S.) economy, we hope Congress ratifies the North American free trade agreement as soon as possible. For one thing is certain about Trump’s trade wars: There is nothing “good” or “easy” about them.

Exit alert! Donald Trump can't even keep a loyal personal assistant!

Trump’s Personal Assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, Steps Down (You're fired!)

So, Maine Writer question? Will Donald Trump appoint an "interim" personal assistant? Nearly everybody who surrounds him is "interim", while the neon exit sign on the White House corridor to the door shines with immersive 3 Dimensional intensity.  

A report published in The New York Times, by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman.

Donald Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said.

Ms. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, N.J., during the president’s working vacation, according to one of the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House personnel issues.

Madeleine Westerhout is now a former personal assistant to Donald Trump

The breach of trust meant immediate action: Ms. Westerhout, one of the people familiar with her departure said, was now considered a “separated employee” and would not be allowed to return to the White House on Friday.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Westerhout did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Ms. Westerhout, a former Republican National Committee aide who also worked for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, reportedly cried on election night because she was upset over Mr. Trump’s victory. As such, the president at first viewed her warily, as a late convert to his cause who could not be trusted.

But some of Mr. Trump’s top officials — like John F. Kelly, who has since left as chief of staff — tried to turn Ms. Westerhout into an ally who could help them manage Oval Office traffic. They hoped that she could block individuals from reaching the president on the phone or in person, and that she would report back on the calls and meetings that made it through.

Ms. Westerhout’s power in the White House came almost entirely from proximity. She is not a name-brand White House aide and has never appeared on television, unless it was an accidental shot of her hovering behind her boss. But while she was not a decision maker, she enjoyed unique access to Trump.

She also often shared snapshots on her private Instagram account of her life in the West Wing, including travel to rallies and Trump properties, and in one post she joked that she had been responsible for printing out a piece of paper that Mr. Trump held up and referred to at a public event.

Republicans gobble up tax cuts but ignore Donald Trump incompetence

Letter echo published in the Santa Rosa California Press Democrat newspaper

Donald Trump is destroying the Republican reputation for fiscal responsibility and free trade

Tax cuts and deficits- only making the rich, much richer.

EDITOR:  "The only reason the US deficits are unsustainable and again out of control is because of the Republicans’ love affair with rewarding the rich with tax cuts. And this has been the case every single time they do it."  Susan Roberts, from Rohnert Park, California

Trump’s ‘invisible fist’ will not make anybody great again!

EDITOR: Led by Donald Trump, the Republicans have repeatedly and wrongly attacked Democrats as democratic socialists. 

But this past week, Trump leaped ahead calling for full-blown Soviet-style state socialism! A few days ago, he tweeted: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for alternatives to China …” Such core Republican axioms as free enterprise and free markets have been abandoned by Supreme Commander Trump.

Always claiming that he alone can make American great again, Trump has just replaced Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of competitive market forces with his “invisible fist.”

Where are the Republicans who should be loudly decrying Trump’s embrace of state socialism as he orders American companies to immediately follow his commands? Perhaps those Democrats advocating for more democratic socialism, but not Trump-style command (tyrannical) socialism, aren’t so scary after all.

From John Donnelly, Sonoma California

Donald Trump is a white man's failed leader

Donald Trump is a failed leader. Moreover, his racist policies are destroying America

I have a rough time accepting the fact that any level-headed, honest-thinking American could cast a vote for such a hateful individual as Donald Trump. The economy is nothing compared to moral values, common decency and respect. Trump has done more to divide this country morally, racially and ethically than any other president in U.S. history. That should be his slogan, because he seems to be proud of it.

It’s not about Hillary losing. It’s not about Democrat or Republican. Recently a friend who is a Trump supporter (and I respect that) said to me, “Donald Trump is a white man’s president.” I told him, “Not this white man.” And if that is true, I’m ashamed of the white man.

I have never had the desire to meet a president. But if President Barrack Obama knocked on my door, I’d invite him in gladly and feel honored. If Trump knocked on my door, I’d throw him off my property.

May God bless America and guide America and its citizens to common decency.

Edward A. Svitek, Brackenridge Pennsylvania

Impressive coalition of historians endorse anti-bigotry statement

Statement from the AHA on Domestic Terrorism, Bigotry, and History (August 2019)- published in History News Network.

The following is an excerpt from the statement by the American Historical Association. 

The American Historical Association expects the following statement to stimulate more questions than answers. The Association hopes these questions make their way into classrooms, libraries, museums, city council meetings, community centers, and even coffee shops, wherever people are trying to connect with each other to make historical sense of our current moment.

Shortly after the November 2016, presidential election, the American Historical Association noted with dismay the “continuing evidence of polarization to the point of harassment seldom seen in recent American history. Historians can say with confidence that this is not our nation’s finest hour. Language previously relegated to the margins has moved out of the shadows, emboldening elements of American society less interested in a more perfect union than in division and derision.”

That was the first time the AHA had issued a statement in response to an election. We were well aware of the dangers of seeming to be entering a political realm, venturing beyond our mission of promoting historical work, historical thinking, and the professional interests of historians. But we were equally aware of the responsibility we bear as part of the institutional matrix of civil society. As teachers, researchers, and citizens, historians bring to civic culture the values of “mutual respect, reasoned discourse, and appreciation for humanity in its full variety” that we emphasized in our 2016 statement. As historians, we recognized the dangers on the horizon, given what we have learned and taught about the histories of bigotry and its implications in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

And now, in the wake of mass homicide in Pittsburgh, El Paso, and elsewhere, our fears are being realized. These events rest on a long history of racist and xenophobic domestic terrorism, evident when taking a historical perspective but too seldom recognized in public discourse. Too few Americans, for example, frame the Ku Klux Klan within the context of a history of racially oriented terrorism that must be named and contextualized if we are to learn from the past and do better in the future.

The lack of public awareness of domestic terrorism’s place in American history stands in stark contrast to frequent contemporary references to immigration and immigration policy. The United States has traditionally prided itself on being “a nation of immigrants.” This phrase is aspirational, but the historical reality is more complicated. Other than relatively recent immigrants, African Americans’ ancestors were brought here by force, and enslaved for generations. For many other people, the United States has been a land of hope and opportunity. Millions have come to our shores since the 16th century, some of them fleeing poverty and oppression, others displaced by war or economic collapse. Some intended to stay, some wanted only to earn enough to return to their home countries with added resources. Their struggles for respect and inclusion, although often marked by hostility and bigotry, have expanded and democratized our country’s definition of what it means to be American.

Increasingly in recent years, policy makers, political commentators, and even terrorists themselves have been drawing on and twisting history to oppose the expansive democracy immigration has helped to build. Many of them adopt the dark vision of early 20th-century exclusionist politics, which insisted that some people could never be real Americans. Some of them create a mythic “white” past rooted in a misreading of medieval Europe. And to one extent or another, many replace the nation’s complex experience of migration with dangerous talk of “invasion,” language that led directly to the El Paso assault and the deaths of 22 people. The rhetoric also elides the history of North America’s indigenous people, who are the only residents who can legitimately claim to have been “invaded.”

As the largest organization of professional historians in the world, the AHA condemns the recent deployment of histories invented in the interest of bigotry, violence, and division. Many critics of white nationalism have admirably insisted that “this is not who we are.” If the statements of white nationalists do not reflect who Americans are or want to be, they do compose an undeniable part of our collective past. Those aspects of the nation’s heritage should be exposed and overcome, rather than ignored or celebrated. Knowledge of history can help Americans achieve that goal.

The following affiliated societies have endorsed the above statement:

American Academy of Religion

American Anthropological Association

American Catholic Historical Association

American Folklore Society

American Journalism Historians Association

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH)

Association for Jewish Studies (Executive Committee)

Association of College & Research Libraries

Business History Conference

Chinese Historians in the United States

Committee on LGBT History

Council on Asian History

Coordinating Council for Women in History

Dance Studies Association

Disability History Association

Immigration and Ethnic History Society

International Society for the Scholarship on Teaching and Learning in History

Labor and Working-Class History Association

Latin American Studies Association

Medieval Academy of America

Middle East Studies Association

National Council on Public History

North American Conference on British Studies

Oral History Association

Organization of American Historians

Rhetoric Society of America

Shakespeare Association of America

Sixteenth Century Society and Conference

Society for Austrian and Hapsburg History

Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study

Society of Civil War Historians

Southern Historical Association

World History Association

Donald Trump is a corrupt leader - do not vote for him!

A letter to the editor echo opinion!

Choose a wise and moral leader-echo opinion letter published in the Palladium-Item, an Indiana newspaper. 

It is clear to me that Donald Trump is unfit to be our president. His dozens of racist remarks, defending white supremacists, being accused of sexual assault or rape by over a dozen women, not releasing his tax records like every other U.S. President, evidence that he cheated on past taxes and business deals, belittling those who disagree with him, hiring people with conflicts of interest (e.g. hiring coal and fracking executives to keep our air and water clean), blaming Obama or Democrats for things they had nothing to do with, gutting years of successful environmental policies such as the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water and Clean Power rules, ignoring European allies and overturning the Iran nuclear deal and the IBM Treaty, imposing tariffs on Chinese goods that hurt American farmers, rewarding the wealthy with tax breaks while cutting the food and Medicare safety net for those in poverty, separating parents from their children at the border and putting them in cages, showing little empathy for victims of natural disasters and gun violence, and lying up to 20 times a day.

These behaviors and policies go against all moral values and wisdom. If you would vote for Trump because the economy has improved or because he has appointed conservative, anti-choice judges, please balance this with ALL the immoral behaviors and policies listed above. Then ignore political parties and vote for the most moral and wise leader for president in 2020.

Jane Telfair Stowe from Richmond, Indiana

Donald Trump choas and lunacy must end! Echo opinion

https://www.lubbockonline.com/news/20190826/gerson-trump-presidency-not-just-unfolding-but-unraveling

Michael Gerson: Trump presidency is not just unfolding, but unraveling- echo published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Historians studying the Trump presidency will have a prodigious amount of digital material that demands examination, but defies explanation. 

For example, the president’s Aug. 21, half-hour, South Lawn press availability deserves to be at the top of that list.

Michael Gerson opinion published in the Lubbock Texas newspaper

With the whir of a helicopter engine in the background, Donald Trump veered from topic to topic with utter confidence, alarming ignorance, minimal coherence and relentless duplicity.

President Vladimir Putin, he said, “made a living on outsmarting President Obama” -- even though it is Trump who now urges a Russian return to the G-7 summit without any concessions on Putin’s part.

On pursuing the trade war with China, Trump called himself the “chosen one.” (!) This came within hours of retweeting the claim he is loved like “the second coming of God.” At some point, arrogance is so extreme and delusional that it can only be expressed in blasphemy.

Trump accused the Danish prime minister of “blowing off the United States” because she scorned his own balmy, offensive musings on the future of Greenland (!). “We treat countries with respect,” he said -- except, presumably, the ”----hole” ones.

Trump’s new immigration rule, he claimed, would “do even more” to bring migrant families together -- though this togetherness, he failed to mention, would come by allowing the indefinite detention of migrant families.

“I am the least racist person ever to serve in office,” said the man who is increasingly bold in his use of racist tropes.

He joked again about being in office 10 or 14 years from now -- appealing to people who find overturning the constitutional order a laugh riot.

“Mental health,” Trump went on. “Very important.” Hard to argue with that one.

“Our 2nd Amendment will remain strong,” Trump promised, while previewing an effort to overturn that portion of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Some parts of the Constitution, clearly, are more constitutional than others.

Trump pledged the return of thousands of captured Islamic State fighters to Europe, one way or another. “If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them in the countries from which they came, which is Germany, France and other places.” 

Did the president of the United States just threaten to release dangerous terrorists on the streets of our closest allies? Evidently.

Of the wounded and grieving families Trump visited following recent mass shootings: “The love for me,” he boasted, “and my love for them was unparalleled.” And this was demonstrated by “hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor.” No one draws a bigger crowd in an intensive care unit.

After repeating an anti-Semitic trope about the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic, Trump insisted to a reporter, “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.” But control over the plain meaning of English words is not a presidential power. And the charge of disloyalty is the essence of anti-Semitism.

Seldom in presidential history has more nonsense been expressed with greater concision. Never would the interests of America have been better served by a louder helicopter.

What to make of this? First, the Trump presidency is not just unfolding, it is unraveling. All narcissists believe they are at the center of the universe. But what happens when a narcissist is actually placed at the center of the universe? The chosen one happens. Trump is not just arguing for an alternative set of policies; he is asserting an alternative version of reality, in which resistance to his will is disloyalty to the country.

Second, the president has systemically removed from his circle anyone who finds this appalling. Every president has the right to advisers who share his basic worldview. But Trump appears, on many topics, to have stopped taking advice altogether. His counselors are now flunkies. The proof of their loyalty is not found in the honesty of their opinions but in the regurgitation of his insanity.

Third, the president is increasingly prone to the equation of the national interest with his personal manias. He is perfectly willing to threaten relations with Denmark -- or to force the Israeli government into a difficult choice -- if it serves his tweeted whims. This approach is more characteristic of personal rule than democratic leadership. Self-worship is inconsistent with true patriotism.

Trump’s promotion of moral and political chaos puts other members of his party in a difficult position. Difficult, but not complicated. It is their public duty to say that foolish things are foolish, that insane things are insane, that bigoted things are bigoted. On growing evidence, their failure to do so is abetting the country’s decline into farce.

Michael Gerson’s column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.

Voter integrity - paper ballots are essential: Echo from Indiana

Paper vote backup is absolutely essential for 2020, election- echo opinion letter from the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne Indiana.https://www.wjtv.com/top-stories/dhs-official-calls-for-paper-ballots-to-help-secure-2020-election-mississippi-has-a-paper-trail/

The Journal Gazette (July 30) - writing from Wayne Indiana,  reports that Allen County will have a paper vote backup – truly a good thing when it was discovered, and agreed to by Republicans and Democrats alike, that the Russians had practiced extensive and pervasive interference in the 2016 election with the goal of supporting Donald Trump and discouraging support for his competitor.

Not implementing the paper vote backup technology until 2029 belies the fact that the Russians are going to interfere with our 2020 election (a contention supported by all of our intelligence agencies). It is believed the interference will probably be even more invasive, given the support for it by the White House, with perhaps even attempts to change actual votes at polling places.

I implore Beth Dlug, Allen County Indiana director of elections, to realize the delay in implementing paper vote backup is a clear message to the Russians it's OK to interfere in the 2020, elections as we will have no backup to confirm votes at the polling places.

I read that it will cost $1.2 million to implement this technology. 

In my mind, that is a small amount to secure our elections in the future.

We must act now to get paper vote backup technology for the 2020 presidential election. Act now to secure our democracy for ourselves and to the world that depends on us as a beacon of freedom.

David Maher, Fort Wayne Indiana

Horrible observation at Nogales crossing - "...agent with a Russian sounding accent..."

Opinion letter echo : Appalled at the port in Nogales (International)

I just saw something I had never before seen happen at the border in my 69 years of crossing.

International crossing - horrible observation of a child abandoned by border officer

I was at the pedestrian crossing at the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry and the border officer did not allow a little girl (a minor) go up to her with her mother. She made the little girl go through alone and then sent her outside the building – alone, at night. If the mother had been detained, that child would be on her own and end up with Child Protective Services for being on her own.

I asked the officer, who spoke with a Russian-like accent, how she could send that child outside alone. She responded that the child would be on federal property and that there were many border police outside. There was nobody outside. The officers were on the other side of a 15-foot iron fence, across the street, across a four-foot cement wall, with their backs towards the exit of the port of entry. They would be oblivious if a child was distraught at the exit and the child would not have known what to do.

I fear for all children who are crossing legally with their parents. They are being separated from them and being placed in danger. The president of the United States has told the officers he has their back. This is institutional child abuse, putting children in traumatizing situations.

On another occasion, I witnessed Central Americans walk up to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at the border to request asylum. I was next in line to drive into the border check and already in U.S. territory with the officer right next to me, so the asylum-seekers were on U.S. soil.

Asylum is a protection granted to foreign nationals already in the United States or at the border who meet the international legal definition of a “refugee.” (The Refugee Act established two paths to obtain refugee status — either from abroad as a resettled refugee, or in the United States as an asylum-seeker.) But the Central Americans were turned away. The CBP officer lied to the Central Americans and sent them away.

I ask the Nogales community to be vigilant! Whether you cross the border or not, if friends and family share problems they are having at the border, please report them to your , in my case I will be reporting this to Rep. Raul Grijalva (520) 622-6788, Senator Kristen Sinema (602) 598-7327 or Senator Martha McSally (520) 670-6334. If you can get the officer’s name, it is even better.

If these federal agents can lie like this and create their own international laws, who have we become as a community and as a nation?

Anne Doan, Nogales (International crossing)

Trumpian unsustainable deficits

By Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University a Contributing Editor of the History News Network

On July 5, 2019 the White House put out a (lie!) statement declaring “The Trump Economy Smashes Expectations Once Again.” (Middle class workers need up to three jobs to pay bills!)

It added that the “June’s jobs report smashed expectations, proving once again that Donald J. Trump’s pro-growth policies are delivering for American workers.” Two days later, The Washington Post noted that a recent poll by it and ABC News gave Trump “the best approval rating of his presidency,” and the main reason appeared to be our “strong economy.”

And yes in April unemployment fell to the lowest rate in the last half-century, and in July the stock market reached all-time highs.

Although heretofore in August the stock market has fluctuated widely, and talks of a possible recession prior to the 2020 elections have increased, Trump knows that his reelection chances could be greatly affected by the state of the U. S. economy. Thus, he is likely to use all powers at his disposable, including additional tax cuts, to make the economy look as good as possible in 2020.

But as a historian and grandfather of six grandchildren, 16 and under, I think that Trump’s claims of a “strong economy” are misleading. A recent comparison of the “Trump vs. Obama economy” puts the matter in better perspective. 

Those who in 2020, vote for Trump primarily because “he has improved the economy”—if superficially this still seems to be the case—will be as foolish as those Germans who supported Hitler between 1939 and 1942 because he had expanded German control over much of Europe. Or as unwise as those who agreed with financier Bernard Baruch and believed in 1929, right before the onset of the Great Depression, that “the economic condition of the world seems on the verge of a great forward movement.”

Historians are not seers who can know the future, but as futurist Tom Lombardo has written, “Memory of the past . . . is the knowledge foundation for both present and future consciousness, as well as wisdom.” And we know enough of the past to realize that good judgments often require a time-based perspective.

Trump and the justifiers of his economic policies represent, to use the words of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a case of “Irrational Exuberance.” Such exuberance is misplaced for many reasons, but two outcomes will be especially harmful to our children and grandchildren. The first is the tremendous environmental damage that the Trump economy is unleashing, and the second is the ever-growing national debt. 

Regarding the environment, let’s put aside the social, political, moral, and cultural effects and zero in on the economic cost, for the economy is our focus here. Since we are considering future economic costs, there is no certainty as to their amount, just as there has been no certainty in the past about how much major wars would cost. But consider the dire projection made by the 13 federal agencies in the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)’s 2018 report to the U. S. Congress and President Trump: “The continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century.” 

An article in Market Watch cited this same report and mentioned other findings and projections on the economic threat of climate change: “Climate change has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $350 billion over the past decade [think, for example, of payments for hurricane, flooding, drought, and fire damage, all heightened by climate change]. . . . By 2050, that figure will be $35 billion per year. . . .Climate change will send food, energy, and water costs soaring. . . . Incomes are expected to shrink by 36% by 2100 due to climate change, and millennials will bear the brunt of the economic effects.” In addition, rising temperatures and erratic weather events will increase food costs. “A 21-year-old college student graduating in 2015 is expected to lose $126,000 in lifetime income due to climate change and the generation as a whole is expected to lose $8.8 trillion in lifetime income.” While climate-change effects are likely to decrease income, they are expected to increase health care costs, including for mental health. “The American Psychological Association predicts that climate disruption will cause a steady increase in mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and addiction.”

Although the above predictions are not certainties, they help make the point that in judging the success of the Trump economy, we cannot dismiss the future effects of his climate policies. Also threatening their future is the growing national debt, a subject that has received increasing attention during the last week following the release of a new study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Although George W. Bush left Barack Obama a $1.4 trillion national deficit, by Obama’s last full year in office (2016), it was only $587 billion for the fiscal year (ending September 30). Under Trump in 2017, it was $666 billion; and in 2018, $779 billion. For fiscal 2020, the CBO estimates the deficit will be $1 trillion. When Trump became president the accumulated national debt was $19 trillion. By July 2019, it was over $22 trillion. Thus, although during his 2016 campaign he claimed he could eliminate the debt if allowed to serve two terms, so far under him it has increased by $3 trillion.

True, the debt is not entirely Trump’s doing—the economic record of any presidency is affected by many factors. For example, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, signed by Trump at the beginning of August, was supported by more Congressional Democrats than Republicans, and it raised budget caps and the nation’s debt limit for two years. But Trump enthusiastically supported it, tweeting that the plan was “phenomenal for our Great Military, our Vets, and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! Two year deal gets us past the Election.” AWashington Post article on the deal stated “Mitch McConnell told President Trump privately last month that no politician has ever lost an election for spending more money. That mind-set—caring more about the next election than future generations—helps explain Trump’s motivation.

Moreover, Trump also claims that the economy is his—see this essay’s first sentence—and voters in 2020 will consider him the politician most responsible for it. Though if there is an economic downturn, he will no doubt blame it on the Federal Reserve and other non-Trumpian causes. Also the December 2017 tax cut was mainly his doing, and the CBO estimated that it would add more than $1.5 trillion to the budget deficit over a decade.

By decreasing revenues, as well as increasing income inequality, it meant government borrowing had to increase. Even with the low interest rates now existing, the federal government this year must pay more than $350 billion to service that debt. (If Trump pushes additional tax cuts to increase his election chances, that would likely increase the debt even more.) On a recent PBS Newshour conservative David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields agreed that our children and grandchildren “are going to have to deal with . . . the [debt] burden.”

Similarly, it is future generations who will be most impacted by climate change. Commenting on the activism of the million and a half kids worldwide who in March 2019 went on a climate strike and refused to go to school, environmentalist Bill McKibben said, “I think the reason that young people are so involved is because . . . you and I are going to be dead before climate change hits its absolute worst pitch. But if you’re in high school right now, that absolute worst pitch comes right in the prime of your life.

And if we’re not able to take hold of this, then those lives will be completely disrupted, and they’ve figured that out.”

Thus, during the present campaign season if individuals tell you they’re voting for Trump in 2020 because of the “good economy,” mention the environment, deficits, and the debt to them. 

And since Republicans often like to talk about “family values,” ask them what kind of world they think the “Trumpian economy” is going to bequeath to their kids and grandkids.

Send gun violence medical bills to the National Rifle Association

Guns in America- opinion echo letter published in The Post and Courier, a Charleston South Carolina newspaper.

It’s a tragedy more than 23,800 Americans committed suicide, another 14,500 were murdered or killed accidentally, and 67,000 were injured by guns in 2015, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Maybe the National Rifle Association should pay the medical bills.

It’s a tragedy that, unlike our ability to make cars or anything else safer, we have been unwilling to legislate safer guns or safer laws for possessing guns or handling them. Prayer doesn’t seem to be working.

Blaming “mental health” is a red herring. The mentally ill are the ones committing suicide with guns, not shooting others.

America is a diverse nation of immigrants. By focusing our rhetoric on ethnicity or religion or whatever, we only cave in to our enemies’ efforts to divide and conquer us.

We need to change the language we use. “White supremacists” hate Americans who happen to be Latinos or other ethnicities. In their hatred, they deliberately kill Americans.

In my mind, if you hate any part of America enough to try to kill or injure any group of Americans, you are anti-American and certainly not a patriot.

Those who are anti-American are our enemy by definition. Perhaps “anti-American terrorist” or “enemy combatant” would be a more appropriate title. 

From Tom Balliet, Serenity Point Drive, Bluffton, South Carolina

Thinking about the King of Israel - confusing Christian and Jew: Donald Trump's chaotic thinking

An echo opinion letter published in the Charleston, South Carolina newspaper, "Post and Courier".

King Donald of Israel

Donald Trump’s recent comments and quotes of other sources point out his lack of understanding of the world and his lack of respect for the truth.

In short, his most recent post, comparing himself to King David and inferring he is the incarnate messiah, is most likely a poorly thought-out lie. He gets around fact-checkers by quoting another source, and chaotically credits another source, the people of Israel.

I suspect it is a lie for two reasons. First, no self-respecting Jew would ever refer to a second coming of God, when they are still waiting for a messiah. Secondly, Mr. Trump was trying to relate to the second coming of Christ, not “the second coming of God.” Jews don’t see Jesus as the messiah, so that reference wouldn’t have worked.

By comparing himself to the king of Israel, insulting Jews by confusing the number of times God has made his presence known on Earth and insulting Christians by confusing God and Jesus, he has alienated the entire Jewish/Christian community in a way not seen since the time of Pontius Pilate.

Maybe Mr. Trump is more like the ruler of Israel than we thought, just not David.

From Timothy Kiel, Pelzer Drive, Mount Pleasant (Charleston) South Carolina

When does silence about racism become "complicity"?

What the writer Toni Morrison Understood About Hate

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison

Donald Trump bears out the author’s warnings about the violence of language.

An echo essay by David Remnick published in The New Yorker.

In December, 1993, Toni Morrison flew to Stockholm to deliver the lecture required of those awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Morrison's subject was the power of language. Words, she said, have the capacity to liberate, empower, imagine, and heal, but, cruelly employed, they can “render the suffering of millions mute.” Morrison was unsparing in her depiction of people who would use language to evil ends. Pointing to “infantile heads of state” who speak only “to those who obey, or in order to force obedience,” she warned of the virulence of the demagogue. “Oppressive language does more than represent violence,” she said. “It is violence.”

Morrison died on August 5th, at the age of eighty-eight, in New York. Her novels and essays, exploring black communities with intimacy and imagination, took in the legacy of slavery, the rejection of Reconstruction, the brutalities of Jim Crow––the whole of American history. Even in her final years, her political sense remained unerring. Just days after the 2016 election, writing in this magazine (The New Yorker), she sensed the arrival of a troubling era, one centered on a callous and cunning confidence man:

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Donald Trump is far from the first President to express rank prejudice. Thomas Jefferson, in “Notes on the State of Virginia,” maintained that black men and women had a “very strong and disagreeable odor.” Woodrow Wilson screened the Klan-glorifying film “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House. As we learned recently, Ronald Reagan, in a telephone conversation with Richard Nixon, referred to Africans as “monkeys.” And so on.

But what is unique about Trump, at least in modern times, is the extent to which bigotry is his principal means of rousing support. Trump backers who aren’t drawn to his bigotry choose to tolerate it. Ours is a country that could elect a black President preaching unity; it is also a country where tens of millions of Americans continue to say that they will vote for a man whose platform is nativism and division.

There is calculation behind the bigotry. Trump recognized that Obama’s ascent to the White House, in 2008, was met by a powerful racist reaction. Hate crimes and white-supremacist groups proliferated, as did threats against the President’s person. And so Trump began his political career deploying the language of conspiracy theory. First as a candidate and then as President, he spoke of Mexican “rapists,” of “caravans” filled with encroaching “aliens”; he directed invective at African-Americans, Muslims, women, and immigrants, and at legislators of color. Drawing on a long and toxic tradition, he has put forward a form of white identity politics in which violent language gives license to violent acts.

Such language is hardly a matter of thoughtless improvisation. Recently, the Times reported that the Trump campaign has seized on the imagery of “invasion”––one of the President’s favorite descriptions of immigration––as a theme for its Facebook ads. 

Such language is in synch with that of the mass shooter in El Paso, who, before killing twenty-two people and wounding many more in a Walmart, appears to have issued a manifesto warning that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” And, as the civil-rights leader Bryan Stevenson says, the insistence on unfettered gun ownership is a core tenet of white identity politics.

Although the solidity of the President’s base should not be underestimated, a sense of alarm is growing. The clerical leaders of the Washington National Cathedral, where the funerals of Presidents Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, and Bush took place, gave voice to that alarm last week. “When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human ‘infestation’ in America,” they wrote, in an official statement. “Violent words lead to violent actions.” And they asked, “When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours.”

After the recent massacres in El Paso and in Dayton, White House aides evidently decided that Trump needed to dial back his (hateful!) rhetoric. In a brief speech, he denounced white supremacy, but with the vacant affect of a hostage reading for the camera. Liberated from this chore, he soon regained his usual temper; visiting the bereaved in Texas and Ohio, he found the time to lambaste local officials, along with “Sleepy” Joe Biden, “the LameStream media,” and other customary targets.

In 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt characterized the Presidency as “preëminently a place of moral leadership.” Trump, by contrast, once told his circle of advisers that they should “think of each Presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.” In the Trump (evil fantasy!) show, which will soon be up for renewal, immigrants, Muslims, and people of color are regularly cast as the villains.

Toni Morrison approached the enduring phenomenon of American bigotry and nativism from many angles. But, she had a clear sense that the critical function of racism was distraction. Racism “keeps you from doing your work,” she said. “It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” 

This article appears in the print edition of the August 19, 2019, issue, with the headline “Words and Wounds.”

Jewish echo opinion from California- Donald Trump fuels Antisemitism

Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times and article by Jeffrey Fleishman

Trump’s Jewish comments play on anti-Semitism in culture, film and art*

I am a Jew. My vote has always gone to a person who has a strong moral compass. In the world of politics, sometimes it is the lesser of two not-quite-moral people. Trump would never get my vote. Trump’s constant debasing of others, the encouragement of hate, the lack of dignity and composure, the weakening of environmental regulations, the weakening of regulations regarding discrimination — all these leave me in a state of utter disbelief.

His statements about Jews who voted for Democrats showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty” match all the tropes for anti-Semitism.

From Sue Robin, Los Angeles

*Los Angeles Times article by Jeffrey Fleishman 

Trump's 'Disloyalty' Claim About Jewish Democrats Shows He Doesn't Get How They Vote

Nazi caricatures of Jews as conniving, scurrilous schemers — a people of hooked noses and sinister motives — infused the art, literature, film and propaganda that led to the Holocaust. Jews had been stereotyped for centuries across Europe as devious and untrustworthy. They hoarded money, killed Jesus, betrayed the French, brought vermin and disease.

President Trump’s comments Wednesday that Jews who voted for Democrats would be “very disloyal” to Israel were certainly not as potent as Nazi-era iconography. But to many they echoed with a veiled anti-Semitism that has lingered through his administration, from his refusal to condemn neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 — who marched to the cry of “Jews will not replace us” — to not explicitly rebuking white supremacist David Duke during the 2016 campaign.

A former reality TV star, Trump knows the power of an image, the sting and resonance of a word. (Maine Writer- Trump should be "fired" because of his racist rhetoric!) His comments about Jewish political loyalty conjure the aura of pejorative cultural depictions stretching from Charles Dickens’ pickpocket ringleader Fagin in “Oliver Twist” to Nazi-era posters of furtive, double-dealing rabbis to swastikas and racist cartoons posted on alt-right websites and chat rooms.

“The charge of disloyalty has been used to harass, marginalize, and persecute the Jewish people for centuries,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement. “Sometimes referred to as the ‘dual loyalty’ charge, it alleges that Jews should be suspected of being disloyal neighbors or citizens because their true allegiance is to their coreligionists around the world or to a secret and immoral Jewish agenda.”

Long cast as outsiders and scapegoats, Jews have often been portrayed with derogatory characteristics: The greedy, if complicated, moneylender Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”; the cunning Jew who tricks German royalty in “Jud Süss,” a 1940 film ordered up by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; and the 16th century painting “Christ Among the Doctors” by Albrecht Durer, which portrays a glowing, innocent Renaissance Jesus surrounded by craven and disfigured Jewish scholars.

In his 19th century novel “The Marble Faun,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that Jews were reminiscent of “maggots when they overpopulate a decaying cheese.” In the 1930s, radio priest Father Charles Coughlin had a fervent following in America for his virulently anti-Semitic sermons. Charges that Jews control Hollywood and the media are still prevalent today on alt-right social media.

Many such renderings sprang from a culture controlled by Christian leaders, including the Vatican in Rome, which did not until 1965, disavow the notion — written in the Gospel of John — that Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. Such religious beliefs were politicized in the 20th century when Jews were stereotyped as devoted to the Marxist and Communist ideologies that defined the Cold War.

“To my fellow American Jews, particularly those who support @realDonaldTrump: When he uses a trope that’s been used against the Jewish people for centuries with dire consequences, he is encouraging — wittingly or unwittingly — anti-semites throughout the country and world,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, posted this week on Twitter. “Enough.”

Trump’s statements about Jews being disloyal if they vote for Democrats came as the president was facing criticism in the U.S. and Israel for urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to allow two Muslim congresswomen — Democrats Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — to enter his country. Omar has been accused of anti-Semitic remarks in criticizing Israeli policy.

The atmosphere grew more surreal this week when Trump was (ugh!) praised by conservative commentator and conspiracy theorist (evil!) Wayne Allyn Root for being “the greatest president for Jews.” Root likened Trump to “the king of Israel.” Trump tweeted the remarks.

Asked Wednesday whether his remarks could be construed as being anti-Semitic, Trump — who called himself “the chosen one” — insisted, “No, no, no. It’s only in your head,” before leaving Washington to address military veterans in Kentucky. “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.”

By Jeffrey Fleishman - A senior writer on film, art and culture for the Los Angeles Times. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Washington Post wrote this headline:  Trump, amid claims of anti-Semitism, invoked Henry Ford. Hitler called the automaker his ‘inspiration.’