The following article by Fred Barbash and Derek Hawkins was posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2017:
Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign and now into the first weeks of his presidency, critics suggested that he cool his incendiary rhetoric, that his words matter. His defenders responded that, as Corey Lewandowski said, he was being taken too “literally.” Some, like Vice President Pence, wrote it all off to his “colorful style.” Trump himself recently explained that his rhetoric about Muslims is popular, winning him “standing ovations.”
The following article by Emma Brown as posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2017:
The Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos as education secretary Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, with Vice President Pence casting a historic tiebreaking vote after senators deadlocked over her fitness for the job.
The All Generalizations are False website has developed a chart breaking down news media based on the quality of reporting (to help those who don’t read or follow news regularly determine what is unbiased, etc.). Here’s the latest version:
The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website February 6, 2017:
If you would like to see a man struggle, witness Vice President Pence:
Pence was asked on “Face the Nation” to account for President Trump having likened Vladimir Putin’s alleged killing of political opponents to the United States’. Trump had told Bill O’Reilly: “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
CBS’s John Dickerson asked Pence, “Do you agree?” And Pence had to draw a long, pronounced breath. Then, asked four times whether the United States is “morally superior” to Russia, Pence avoided and danced around the question before relenting (kind of):
DICKERSON: Do you think America is morally superior to Russia?
PENCE: What — what you have in this new president is someone who is willing to, and is, in fact, engaging the world, including Russia, and saying, where can we find common interests that will advance the security of the American people, the peace and prosperity of the world? And he is determined to come at that in a new and renewed way.
DICKERSON: But America morally superior to Russia — yes or no?
PENCE: I believe that the ideals that America has stood for throughout our history represent the highest ideals of humankind.
(CROSSTALK)
PENCE: I was actually at — I was at Independence Hall yesterday. And I stood in the very room where the Constitution of the United States was crafted, the very building where the Declaration of Independence was held forth. Every American, including our president, represents that we uphold the highest ideals of the world.
(CROSSTALK)
DICKERSON: Shouldn’t we be able to just say yes to that question, though?
PENCE: I think it is, without question, John.
DICKERSON: That America is morally superior to Russia?
PENCE: That American ideals are — are superior to countries all across the world. But, again, what the president is determined to do, as someone who has spent a lifetime looking for deals, is to see if we can have a new relationship with Russia and other countries that advances the interests of America first and the peace and security of the world.
Suffice it to say, this is not an easy question right now for Pence — or anybody in the Trump administration. That’s because American exceptionalism is at the core of the Republican Party’s brand and identity in the 21st century. Squaring that with Trump’s suggestion that the United States doesn’t have the moral high ground on the killing of its opponents requires all the politician-speak one can muster — and ignoring pretty much everything you’ve ever said about why the United States is morally superior to the likes of Russia.
Just look at Pence’s comments about both Russia and American exceptionalism in one speech back in February 2015 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):
“And as we gather here tonight a new iron curtain is descending down the spine of Europe as modern Russia seeks to redraw the map of Europe by force. Unlike the former Soviet Union that respected the strength of West, Putin’s Russia ignores talk of sanctions, claims land, and supports rebels in Ukraine with impunity.”
“You either choose to view America as the shining city on the hill that inspires the best in all mankind, or you don’t.”
“The truth is you cannot command the respect of the world when you spend years apologizing to our enemies and abandoning our friends. Lecturing the American people about the Crusades while refusing to call Islamic extremism by name is an abdication of leadership.”
The last comment in particular sticks out. Pence didn’t like the equivalence between radical Islam today and the Crusades back in the 13th century. Now he’s being asked to explain Trump’s comparison of Putin and the American government.
And then there’s the polling.
Back in 2015, the Pew Research Center asked whether the United States “stands above all others,” was one of the greatest countries, or whether there were other countries that were better.
Fully 48 percent of conservative Republicans said it was the greatest country in the world, compared to 17 percent of liberal Democrats. Just 8 percent of conservative Republicans disagreed that the United States is at least “one of the greatest countries.”
The GOP’s embrace of patriotism and American exceptionalism ramped up after 9/11 and especially when Democrats began to question the war in Iraq. Some on the right fought back by arguing that this was unpatriotic or that war skeptics opposed U.S. troops.
Giuliani is now a key Trump confidant, and Trump is espousing almost that exact view that Giuliani ascribed to Obama. And now the likes of Giuliani and Pence are left to explain it.
The following article by Phillip Bump was posted on the Washington Post February 6, 2017:
Speaking to the U.S. Central Command on Monday, President Trump went off his prepared remarks to make a truly stunning claim: The media was intentionally covering up reports of terrorist attacks.
The following article by Don Lee was posted on the L.A. Times website February 3, 2017:
President Trump speaks on Monday before signing an executive order while surrounded by small business leaders in the White House. (Andrew Harrer / Sipa USA)
President Trump began his second week in office, he sat in the Roosevelt Room, a glass of Diet Coke at hand, and crowed before small business leaders that the stock market had gone up “massively” since his election.
The following article by Craig Timberg was posted on the Washington Post website February 5, 2017:
Daniel John Sobieski, a retiree in Chicago, is able to tweet more than 1,000 times a day using “schedulers” that work through stacks of his own pre-written posts in repetitive loops. (Alyssa Schukar for The Washington Post)
Daniel John Sobieski, 68, climbed the stairs in his modest brick home and settled into a worn leather chair for another busy day of tweeting. But he needn’t have bothered. As one of the nation’s most prolific conservative voices on Twitter, he already had posted hundreds of times this morning — as he ate breakfast, as he chatted with his wife, even as he slept — and would post hundreds of times more before night fell.
The key to this frenetic pace was technology allowing Twitter users to post automatically from queues of pre-written tweets that can be delivered at a nearly constant, round-the-clock pace that no human alone could match. In this way, Sobieski — a balding retiree with eyes so weak that he uses a magnifying glass to see his two computer screens — has dramatically amplified his online reach despite lacking the celebrity or the institutional affiliations that long have helped elevate some voices over the crowd. Continue reading “As a conservative Twitter user sleeps, his account is hard at work”
