Look at the news this week. If there were any doubts that eight months was plenty of time for Bannon to lay eggs in all the drapes (the ones with James B. Comey and the ones without) so that his work could continue without him when he flew back into his cave, Tuesday’s presidential news conference should dispel them. The president is springing to the defense of white supremacists and Nazis. Breitbart‘s work is done here.

Sure, as BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith notes, Bannon claims to be an “economic nationalist” and suggests that whenever a white nationalist is drawn to him or his work it comes to him as a total and unpleasant surprise, but this seems like a pretty fundamental error for a so-called strategic mastermind to have made every day for years and years and years. If all you serve are enormous cones full of red meat sprinkled with dog whistles, after a certain point you cannot keep pretending to be an ice cream truck. President Trump certainly seems confused on the subject, if his remarks this week are any indication.

Trump, meanwhile, had been upset about Bannon’s participation in a book by Bloomberg News reporter Joshua Green, “Devil’s Bargain” — particularly a cover photo giving equal billing to Trump and his chief strategist. Every time Green was on CNN, where he is now contributor, Trump grew unhappy with his references to Bannon as a thinker and strategist — and upset that the conversation was not instead about Trump.

Bannon’s critics noticed that Trump hated this narrative and would casually mention the book whenever they could in private conversations, slowly building a case against Bannon as a self-promoter.

President Trump, this week, disbanded two business advisory councils and dissolved another before it even met. This came after some business leaders resigned because of Trump's remarks about the violence in Charlottesville. But the president's evangelical advisory council is sticking with him - no resignations, no criticism. Let's talk about that with NPR's Tom Gjelten, who covers religion.
...
[Why are the evangelicals sticking by him when business advisers quit?]

Well, one thing is that his official evangelical advisers were with Trump throughout the campaign. They were allied with him politically. That wasn't true for the business advisers. They weren't necessarily supporters. Their role was to share their views on business issues. You could also say that business and religious leaders see their responsibilities differently. Business leaders are sensitive to outside pressure. They have to worry about their customers, their stockholders. Keep in mind, David, how quick many companies are to respond to boycotts, for example.

...they say they see their role more as ministers, as counselors - at least that's what I've heard speaking to some of the evangelicals who have been close to Trump. You know, I pointed out that, of all people, you'd expect the president's religious advisers to have a pretty clear moral compass. So why hasn't a single one resigned in protest over Trump's objectionable comments on Charlottesville? Here's the response I got from one of the advisory council members, Dr. Johnnie Moore.

JOHNNIE MOORE: We believe it would be immoral to resign because, as faith leaders, we have been given an opportunity to speak directly to various members of the administration to provide not just policy counsel but personal counsel. We're personally involved in the lives of all these people, praying for all these people, answering their questions.
...
I went, one by one, through each of these advisory group members, what they'd had to say. And their comments fall into three categories. Some have said nothing at all. They've just kept quiet. Some have defended the president, saying he said all the right things. The others explicitly condemn the white supremacists in much sharper terms than the president used. But still, they stopped short of criticizing Trump himself.

Those who attempt to engage in violence on the #MBTA will be dealt with swiftly by Transit Police officers. #PEACE

Will Bannon be subject to prepublication review consistent with his obligations as someone who held a clearance?

Worth asking what plan is here. Will he be submitting everything to EOP for sign off? NSC? Including pieces by others he substantively edits

This can be a very complex area (trust me). Bannon was fired this afternoon, in ed meeting this evening. Not much time to implement a plan.

“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
...
“Now, it’s gonna be Trump,” Bannon said. “The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely … I just think his ability to get anything done – particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just gonna be that much harder.”

Bannon assigns blame for the thwarting of his program on “the West Wing Democrats,” but holds special disdain for the Washington establishment – especially those Republicans who have, he believes, willfully failed to provide Trump with meaningful victories.

And, he believes, things are about to get worse for Trump. “There’s about to be a jailbreak of these moderate guys on the Hill” – a stream of Republican dissent, which could become a flood [pjb note: sorry to mix metaphors, but I can’t decide if ‘jail break’ is sufficiently self-explanatory].
...
“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency – and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville – his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.
...
“I feel jacked up,” he says. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a fucking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”

When he was still running for president in June 2015, Trump was asked whether or not the Confederate flag flying above the South Carolina state house needed to be taken down. "I think it probably does, and I think they should put it in the museum," he replied. "Let it go. Respect whatever it is you have to respect because it was a point in time, and put it in a museum. But I would take it down, yes."

I've been reporting on Carl Icahn's role as an adviser to Trump. Monday, in an email to me, the White House fired him. Today, he resigned.

So tonight, my piece posts early. Read all about it:

All those people talking about civil war after Charlottesville were right. Only it's going to be within the Republican Party. We are in classic endgame mode here, with various factions of the ruling regime readying for an all-out war against each other, not realizing—consciously—the ground is falling away beneath them, yet realizing—dimly, unconsciously—that it is, and that this is their last chance to get what they can out of it. So you have the desperate race by the establishment to stack the judiciary, much like the Romanovs hoarding the family china as they prepare to flee Petograd, and the more violent assertions of white supremacy by the alt-right on the ground. And now it looks like they'll be fighting—and hopefully destroying—each other.

This is a good piece that shows how far the US is from Nazi Germany, by the guy who wrote that book everyone was praising that examines the connections between Jim Crow and Nazi race law. But I think there are two takeaways that I'd stress here, which get into the larger question why it's a mistake to frame Trump as "fascist" or "authoritarian."

The first is that those words—and whatever underlying analysis they may be accompanied by—tend to obscure the most toxic *long-term* threat and danger of Trump. Which is his court appointments. The rhetoric of authoritarianism and fascism tends to suggest a regime of lawlessness, that consolidates its power through its assaults on the rule of law. Trump is doing the opposite: consolidating the power of his regime through the most ordinary and legal and constitutional means possible. His rhetorical extravagance doesn't consolidate his power; it does just the opposite. His moves against prosecutors and the like: every time he does it, it generates an even greater backlash. Trump fired Comey; he got Mueller investigating him on an even wider and more potent front. He suggests he may fire Mueller, and Congress makes moves to make it almost impossible for him to do so. With the courts, it's different: there, through this tried and true American institution, he sees long-term and permanent gains. The problem here is not authoritarianism or fascism; it's constitutionally appointed judges who'll be with us for a very long time. Again, that's what the rhetoric obscures. [there's more]

My daughter and I went to the rally on Saturday. I want to tell you a little about that. But first, I would like people to understand what it was like in the days leading up to the Alt Right Rally.

Perhaps this will be hard to read. Laments often are.

It may bring you comfort, or it may make you angry. It may make you think more of me, or less. It may offend you. Rest assured, it offends me.

So be it.

Five days after President Trump took office, he signed an executive order that promised a swift, sharp crackdown on illegal immigration — immediate construction of a massive border wall, quick hiring of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and stepped-up deportation of undocumented migrants.

“Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders,” Trump declared at the Jan. 25 ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security, which controls federal immigration agencies.

Seven months later, construction of the wall has yet to begin, the number of Border Patrol officers has actually dropped by 220, and immigration agents are on track to deport 10,000 fewer people this year than in President Obama’s last year in office, the latest figures show.

In a 2016 survey of job satisfaction in federal agencies, Customs and Border Protection ranked 291 out of 305 agencies, even with a slight improvement in the scores. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the group that handles deportations, came in at 299.

A period of retrenchment and terror for Black people and other people of color and Jewish people....DJT has unleashed the most vile elements of this country and told them they can do what they will. They know they have their man in office.

Speaking on the Bill Buckmaster radio show, on KVOI 1030-AM, Grijalva said he agrees with U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, who said this week it's time for the 25th Amendment to be put to use to remove Trump.

Grijalva said the president's reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend was essentially the last straw.

"There’s an accumulation of issues that bring into question this man’s ability to lead," Grijalva said.

2. America is first and foremost an Idea – that all people are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. [...]

3. White supremacy and racism are un-American, period.

D.C.’s resident projection protest artist did not mince words Thursday night in his latest rebuke to President Trump.

Robin Bell drove his van to Trump International Hotel and projected several slides on the facade of the president’s eponymous hotel that said in all capital letters, “The president of the United States is a known racist and a nazi sympathizer.”

“This is not a drill,” the message continued. “We are all responsible to stand up and end white supremacy. #Resist.”

Six months into President Donald Trump's tenure, pictures of him and his vice president are absent from the walls of federal courthouses.

In fact, the official portraits are not hanging in any federal buildings, according to Patrick Sclafani, regional spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration. The agency manages about 1,600 federal buildings.

One recurring feature of the Trump Presidency has been an acute collective sensation, shared by a substantial portion of the electorate, of helpless witness. Dismayed Americans wait, like spectators at a game that has turned suddenly dangerous, for a referee to step in and cry foul. But one reason that Trumpism is so transfixing to watch is that it is about the upending of norms, the defiance of taboos, the destabilization of institutions. School’s out forever. What this means in practice is a serious deficit of accountability. Whom can you call when the authorities are the ones breaking the rules?

This intersection of privilege and terror that is being a white-skinned Jew is very complicated. I am struggling with it from the inside. I want people who care for me and for other Jews to struggle with it from the outside. I want you to try to understand us. I want you to know that we’re not just like regular white people, only louder and with more movement of hands. We’re a complicated and layered thing. To understand us you have to go both backward and forward in time. You have to understand that Jewish time is like geologic time, that 150 or 500 years between expulsions is not that long; it’s not long enough to forget, or to rest. Please fight to understand us, in all of our complexity.

NYT 3/21/17: Toughness, more than any other attribute, is what Mr. Trump has sought to project during his short and successful political career — and he believes his behavior makes him look tougher, no matter what the press thinks.

As a presidential candidate, he wanted to look dour, and vetoed any campaign imagery that so much as hinted at weakness, aides said. Which is why every self-selected snapshot — down to the squinty-eyed scowl attached to his Twitter account — features a tough-guy sourpuss. “Like Churchill,” is what Mr. Trump would tell staffers when asked what look he was going for.

The two sources — an administration official and a senior White House aide — also confirmed that Erik Prince, founder of the former Blackwater private security firm, had been scheduled to attend the session but that he was blocked at the last minute. The administration official said McMaster was the one who blocked Prince.

Now it appears Bannon will return to Breitbart, but don’t think for one second that this is the result of some ideological rift between him and the president. There is no evidence that Trump–who on Tuesday equated neo-Nazis and Klansmen with those who protested them in Charlottesville–was suddenly so full of moral indignation that he fired Bannon, whose racist policies were blatantly promulgated in the White House for over six months and who Trump praised this week.

Instead, the two may very well be working, as they have for a year, in tandem.

[…]

Both Trump and Bannon remain financed by the Mercer family, ultra-conservative mega-donors who funded Trump’s campaign and share their desire to bring down the political establishment. One Mercer family colleague noted how Trump’s regime meshes with their philosophy: “Bob [Mercer] thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.” Another colleague notes that Bob Mercer’s fetish for destruction encompasses the belief that nuclear radiation is beneficial to one’s health.

> Another colleague notes that Bob Mercer’s fetish for destruction encompasses the belief that nuclear radiation is beneficial to one’s health.

TA-NEHISI COATES: It’s infuriating. I mean, it’s absolutely, absolutely infuriating. I mean, I just want to pick up where you just left off, and that is with Ferguson. And what one has to do to really understand the horror of the situation, you have to try to imagine black people in, say, Ferguson, showing up, some of them with guns, some of them dressed in militia outfits, some of them with shields, some of them with clubs. You have to try to imagine, and then having them brawl in the streets with counterprotesters. And you then have to try to imagine the police doing nothing. And I think that just fails the test. I just don’t think, you know, that there’s enough imagination to perceive that, you know, as a possibility.

I was watching those things in Charlottesville on Saturday, and I was amazed. I mean, I should not be amazed. I mean, it pretty much follows, you know, the basic theory. But it is just amazing to see, you know, the police absolutely do nothing, on the one hand, and then when you see all these other cases—you know, imagine if that was how black folks responded when Eric Garner had been choked to death. Imagine if that was how black folks responded to Tamir Rice, if we came out in guns and militia gear. I mean, does anyone think the police would just sort of stand back like that?

> "The Office for the Reëstablishment of Democracy and Democratic Norms and diacritical marks"

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.
...
The FBI, on the other hand, has already concluded that white supremacists, including neo-Nazi supporters and members of the Ku Klux Klan, are in fact responsible for the lion’s share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” reads the joint intelligence bulletin.

Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier. The National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence to support this notion. Nevertheless, according to the onetime employee, Mercer, who is a proponent of nuclear power, “was very excited about the idea, and felt that it meant nuclear accidents weren’t such a big deal.”

Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heel, & we will heel, & be stronger than ever before!

The Confederate vice-president, Alexander H. Stephens, had said in a speech at Savannah on March 21, 1861, that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution” of Southern independence. The United States, said Stephens, had been founded in 1776 on the false idea that all men are created equal. The Confederacy, by contrast,

is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.3

n.b. He still won't use the word "Nazi" or the term "white supremacy".

I’d Love for You to Join Me

I had my team put together a contest for you and a friend to fly out, join me for an incredible rally, and have our photo taken together.

Our rallies are truly something special. There’s no other energy like it.

Contribute now and you could join me at one of our HUGE rallies!

It needs saying that the massively successful counter-protest in Boston today was due mainly to the efforts of Black Lives Matter. The Cambridge and Boston chapters, with support from BLM National, worked really hard to pull this thing together.

It’s clear that, as of now, many Republicans — lawmakers, leaders and strategists — have reached a pair of uncomfortable conclusions. First, whatever they and a majority of the public believe about the repugnancy of the president’s comments, they believe Trump was duly elected as president on the Republican ticket and that he retains a deeply loyal following within the party. They are reluctant to go against that Trump base.

Second, however personally upset they are by Trump’s remarks, many lawmakers believe they must maintain a working relationship with the president if they are to accomplish their legislative goals — including tax reform and even a health-care overhaul.

...

A GOP strategist working campaigns in red and purple states said that while support for Trump generally declined slightly since Charlottesville, support rose among his base, after a decline last month because of the failure on health care and revelations about the Russia investigation.

...

One strategist said he had just seen the numbers from a survey in a battleground state and that the president’s approval among GOP primary voters stood at a still-impressive 85 percent. For elected officials, political survival remains paramount, and they are reluctant to get crosswise with that base.

He added that Republican elected officials “either have to feel punished or be punished” before they will break significantly with the president. “There has to be some sense that there is a price to be paid for this,” he said.

> while support for Trump generally declined slightly since Charlottesville, support rose among his base, after a decline last month because of the failure on health care and revelations about the Russia investigation.

Doesn't make much sense to say anyone suppressed their right to free speech when they had a stage, a PA, a police protection zone around them, an audience of 40,000, and all the media coverage including aerial shots, but then they left without speaking.

Hey rhizome, there are a lot of very progressive folks in the LDS community! The Mormons I know are universally smart, caring, and would completely fit in with the anti-racist, feminist, LGBT pride, disability rights march of your choice. Not the majority, not yet, but times are a-changing all over the place.

In campaigns, we candidates do most of the talking; because we like to, and because people ask us lots of questions. Not this time. Not by a long shot.

Trump talked very rapidly and virtually nonstop for nearly an hour; not of my campaign or even of politics, but only of himself, and almost always in the third person. He’d given himself a nickname: “the Trumpster,” as in “everybody wants to know what the Trumpster’s gonna do,” a claim he made more than once.

He mostly told stories. Some were about his business deals; others about trips he’d taken or things he owned. All were unrelated to the alleged point of our meeting, and to one another. That he seldom even attempted segues made each tale seem more disconnected from reality than the last. It was funny at first, then pathetic, and finally deeply unsettling.

On the drive home, we all burst out laughing, then grew quiet. What the hell just happened? My first theory, that Trump was high on cocaine, didn’t feel quite right, but he was clearly emotionally impaired: in constant need of approbation; lacking impulse control, self-awareness or awareness of others. We’d heard tales of his monumental vanity, but were still shocked by the sad spectacle of him.

"I know people are heated but I think its better to have them on that side of the fence." She said of why she guided several Trump supporters through a swelling crowd where they were getting yelled at and in one case spit on.

"It's the right thing to do at the end of the day. We're all part of the same country. It's unfortunate what's happening but the response we should have is to be nonviolent. You know I don't believe in this right wing narrative of alt left and how we are crazed and looking to get violent. What better way to show that they are wrong?" (Than helping them through the crowd)

"I couldn't get through a KKK rally with the same treatment. But we shouldn't be like them."

@mmurraypolitics: Congressional preference in the new NBC/Marist polls:
MI: D+13 among reg voters
PA: D+10
WI: D+8
(Aug 13-17, MOE +/- 3.5%)

We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their thinking/rationale:

"You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall.

"General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer him to more conventional policy responses.

"Trump's not as evil as portrayed": All of them talk up the president as more reasonable off Twitter and TV than on it. This gives them hope (though almost all increasingly say it's fleeting hope) he will listen to his better angels, or at least the pleas of Ivanka.

"We like the power": Well, no one comes out and say it this blatantly. But working in the White House, even this one, is intoxicating and ego-stroking. They have enormous say over regulations and rules, invites and implementation, government jobs and access to the Oval. They also know they are one step away from an even bigger job in government, so it's hard to just walk away.

These are not normal times. The man in the White House is reckless and unmanageable, a danger to the Constitution, a threat to our democratic institutions.

Last week some of his worst qualities were on display: his moral vacuity and his disregard for the truth, as well as his stubborn resistance to sensible advice. As ever, he lashed out at imaginary enemies and scapegoated others for his own failings. Most important, his reluctance to offer a simple and decisive condemnation of racism and Nazism astounded and appalled observers around the world.

With such a glaring failure of moral leadership at the top, it is desperately important that others stand up and speak out to defend American principles and values. This is no time for neutrality, equivocation or silence. Leaders across America — and especially those in the president’s own party — must summon their reserves of political courage to challenge President Trump publicly, loudly and unambiguously.

I meant it as a commemoration of their crushing defeat & retreat in this particular battle of Civil War II. Something like The Skedaddle of Boston Common

Private dick's Drumpf opposition research looking for bombshells (Via politico)

"Trump's presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives till end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner."
Schwartz warned that they have to keep up the pressure if they want the billionaire to resign. "Trump must be isolated. Resistance every day. The end is near but must keep pressure high," he tweeted.