A Red President for A White States of America-Also} FBI Looking For Trump's Opponents' Names
Two days ago, President Trump defended his response to the violence in Charlottesville where white nationalists and counterprotesters fought. (Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump often behaves as if he’s first and foremost the president of the states and the people who voted for him.
That’s at odds with the American tradition, and it’s problematic as a governing philosophy — especially in a moment of crisis. Trump’s initially tone-deaf response to Charlottesville underscores why.
Animated by grievance and congenitally disinclined to extend olive branches, Trump lashes out at his “enemies” — his 2020 reelection campaign even used that word in a commercial released on Sunday — while remaining reticent to explicitly call out his fans — no matter how odious, extreme or violent.
Channeling his inner-Richard Nixon, who kept an enemies list of his own, candidate Trump often claimed to speak for “a silent majority.” After failing to win the popular vote, President Trump has instead governed on behalf of an increasingly vocal but diminishing minority.
The president has held campaign-style rallies in places like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Indeed, almost all his political travel has been to places he carried last November. He keeps stacks of 2016 electoral maps to hand out to people visiting the Oval Office so he can point out the sea of red. He speaks often about his “base,” preferring to preach to the choir rather than evangelize for his policies. “The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before,” Trump wrote on Twitter last week.
-- Apparently the president sees “the Trump base” as distinct from the GOP base: “Trump's job approval rating in Gallup Daily tracking is at 34% for the three-day period from Friday through Sunday — by one point the lowest of his administration so far,” Frank Newport wrote yesterday. “Republicans' latest weekly approval rating of 79% was the lowest from his own partisans so far, dropping from the previous week's 82%. Democrats gave Trump a 7% job approval rating last week, while the reading for independents was at 29%. This is the first time independents' weekly approval rating for Trump has dropped below 30%.” In the latest Gallup polling, 46 percent of whites approve of Trump’s job performance. That’s the same share Barack Obama had at this point in 2009. But while only 15 percent of nonwhites support Trump, 73 percent backed Obama.
Two days after a woman was killed in Charlottesville amid clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters, President Trump on Aug. 14 condemned racist groups such as the KKK, saying racism “has no place in America.” (Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
-- Trump appeared reluctant to make his brief remarks yesterday, in which he explicitly condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He tacked them on to a hastily arranged speech after praising his own stewardship of the economy, two days after he did not specifically condemn the “Unite the Right” rally and only after an outpouring of criticism from Republican leaders for that omission. Reading from a teleprompter, Trump said that the displays of hatred and bigotry in Charlottesville have “no place in America.” (Read a transcript of the president’s comments here.)
-- The president was still more tepid than members of his own Cabinet. “Though Trump has regularly employed the phrase ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ to describe other attacks in the United States and the Middle East, he chose not to echo Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s conclusion that the violence in Charlottesville met the Justice Department’s definition of ‘domestic terrorism,’” David Nakamura and Sari Horwitz note. -- Conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin describes Trump’s performance as “classic narcissistic behavior”: “The sole determination of whether Trump likes someone (Saudi royalty, thuggish leaders, etc.) is whether they praise him. It’s always and only about him. He has been far more antagonistic toward Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his own attorney general … than he has been toward white nationalists because the former were disloyal in his mind, the only unforgivable sin in the Trump White House. …
“The white nationalists in Charlottesville did not hide their intentions. They were there to revel in the Trump presidency, which explicitly told them it was time to ‘take their country back,’” Rubin notes. “Former KKK grand wizard David Duke left no confusion as to his followers’ admiration for the president: ‘This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back, and that’s what we’ve got to do.’”
-- Meanwhile, alt-right leader Richard Spencer dismissed Trump’s statement as “nonsense,” telling reporters at a news conference yesterday that "[only] a dumb person would take those lines seriously.” Spencer also said he did not consider the president’s words to be a condemnation of the white nationalist movement. “I don't think he condemned it, no,” said Spencer, whose group advocates for a form of American apartheid, per Business Insider. “Did he say 'white nationalist?' 'Racist' means an irrational hatred of people. … I don't think he meant any of us.” Asked whether he considers Trump an ally, Spencer replied that while he didn't think of Trump as “alt-right,” he considers the president to be “the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime.”
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These were excerpts from Washington Post's Red States of America, describing Charlotte's volence and a President who did not see it or chose not or saw only his opponents Vs. his supporters, Who should I condemn? A President who tries not to offend the ultra right not bcause he feels like he is loyal to them (he is anything but loyal) but feels he will need those people who voted for him before, to vote for him again in 2020. He would like to be the candidate of only people that will back him no matter what. The questions are; Would it be enough? Would Russia help again? Would the Democrats put another candidate that can be easily mortally wounded again? Would his supporters be enough to make Trump look attractive against the real candidate like it happend on the last elections. H eknows the people that defend civil rights in this country are not going to vote for him and he fels he is not going to reward them no matter how morally rigt they are. Trump said (a praphrasing) referring to the so called condemnation of mainly the Ultra 'I said this because I was told to'. He'll latter say he was joking. This aint no game...
FBI Looking for Names of Trump's opponents
(CNN)A web hosting provider is fighting back against a search warrant that it claims would require them to turn over information on visitors to a website used to organize protests against President Donald Trump, according to court filings first published on the company's blog Monday.
DreamHost, the web provider in question, said in the post that it has "been working with the Department of Justice to comply with legal process" for months, but federal prosecutors in DC are seeking "all records" related to the website disruptj20.org, which organized protests against the Trump administration in January.
Prosecutors obtained a search warrant for the records in July and are now asking a federal judge to force the company to turn over the information.
The warrant includes "all files" in DreamHost's possession, as well as information on "subscribers" to distruptj20.org and information on those who "participated, planned, organized, or incited" the January protests.
DreamHost contends in court filings that DOJ's requests are unconstitutionally overbroad and would effectively require them to provide the HTTP logs for over 1.3 million IP addresses of visitors to the website.
"That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution's First Amendment," DreamHost said in the blog post. "That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone's mind. This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority."
It is not clear whether DOJ will stand by the breadth of its request, but it argued in an earlier court filing that "DreamHost's opinion of the breadth of the warrant does not provide it with a basis for refusing to comply with the Court's search warrant and begin an immediate production."
The US Attorney's office in DC told CNN on Tuesday that beyond its earlier court filings, it had no further comment.
A court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Friday.
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