Should I remain in bed, leave my country or fight against the dragon?
( see also the story by Wolfgang Hampel,
' Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say ' )
Betty MacDonald's sister Alison Bard Burnett
Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney with grandchild Alison Beck
Betty and Don MacDonald in Hollywood
Ma and Pa Kettle - and Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter December will be very interesting.
We are going to publish the new Betty MacDonald essay by Betty MacDonald fan club research team Anita and Eartha Kitt II.
The subject is ' Betty MacDonald's life on Vashon Island ' with several never published before interviews of Betty MacDonald's family, friends and neighbours.
We've already mentioned Betty MacDonald's homemade Christmas cards.
In which year did Betty MacDonald create this Christmas card?
If you know the answer you might be our Betty MacDonald fan club parcel winner today.
Good luck!
We are so glad that our beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back.
You can celebrate Christmas with Mr. Tigerli.
New Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many new interviews.
Alison Bard Burnett and other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will be included in Wolfgang Hampel's fascinating project Vita Magica.
Very exciting Betty MacDonald fan club news!
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel is going to present life and work of Betty MacDonald in Vita Magica January 2017.
More info will come soon!
Vita Magica December was very successful.Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel invited a very famous author.
The visitors enjoyed Vita Magica very much.
A great event!
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel interviewed Betty MacDonald's daughter Joan MacDonald Keil and her husband Jerry Keil.
This interview will be published for the first time ever.
New Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many interviews never published before.
We adore Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli
Thank you so much for sharing this witty memories with us.
Wolfgang Hampel's literary event Vita Magica is very fascinating because he is going to include Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.
It's simply great to read Wolfgang Hampel's new very well researched stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett, Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others.
Vita Magica was very witty and enjoyable.
We know the visitors had a great time there.
Congratulations dear Letizia Maninco, Wolfgang Hampel and Friedrich von Hoheneichen!
Linde Lund and many fans from all over the world adore this funny sketch by Wolfgang Hampel very much although our German isn't the best.
I won't ever forget the way Wolfgang Hampel is shouting ' Brexit '.
Don't miss it, please.
It's simply great!
You can hear that Wolfgang Hampel got an outstandig voice.
He presented one of Linde Lund's favourite songs ' Try to remember ' like a professional singer.
Thanks a million!
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.
Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.
Letizia Mancino's magical Betty MacDonald Gallery is a special gift for Betty MacDonald fan club fans from all over the world.
Don't miss Brad Craft's 'More friends', please.
Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island is one of my favourites.
I agree with Betty in this very witty Betty MacDonald story Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say by Wolfgang Hampel.
I can't imagine to live in a country with him as so-called elected President although there are very good reasons to remain there to fight against these brainless politics.
Just try to hint that the US is not the greatest country in the world and you’ll be labeled a traitor, despite the fact that we are number 1 in some of the worst statistics possible. We are first in rates of obesity, divorce, incarceration, gun deaths per capita, infant mortality, rape, murder, and student loan debt, to name just a few. Meanwhile, we are last in paid sick days, paid maternity leave, income equality, and programs that reflect a society that cares for its people.
Far too often, the poor, working-class white population votes against their best interests. It’s easier for them to believe that an immigrant or a person of color is stealing their livelihood than to accept that a wealthy white billionaire doesn’t have their best interests in mind, and that there is no such thing as The American Dream.
The reality is that the system is set up to ensure there will always be a huge gap between the rich and the poor because the elites want it that way and most people don’t care enough to do anything about it. We are a country that does not like to take personal responsibility for anything, particularly if it requires effort. We would rather have someone else take care of everything so we can go back to watching Monday Night Football.
Don't miss these very interesting articles below, please.
Copyright 2016 Crooks and Liars
Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President.
Donald
Trump has not been elected president. The real election takes place
December 19, when the 538 Electoral College Electors cast their ballots –
for anyone they want.
If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, in 14 of the states in Trump's column, they can vote for Hillary Clinton without any legal penalty if they choose.
We are calling on “Conscientious Electors” to protect the Constitution from Donald Trump, and to support the national popular vote winner.
Mr. Trump is unfit to serve. His scapegoating of so many Americans, and his impulsivity, bullying, lying, admitted history of sexual assault, and utter lack of experience make him a danger to the Republic.
Learn more in the video above, then sign the petition to join the more than 4.7 million Americans who support this grassroots effort. Please also visit electoralcollegepetition.com to see how you can get further involved in our movement.
If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, in 14 of the states in Trump's column, they can vote for Hillary Clinton without any legal penalty if they choose.
We are calling on “Conscientious Electors” to protect the Constitution from Donald Trump, and to support the national popular vote winner.
Mr. Trump is unfit to serve. His scapegoating of so many Americans, and his impulsivity, bullying, lying, admitted history of sexual assault, and utter lack of experience make him a danger to the Republic.
Learn more in the video above, then sign the petition to join the more than 4.7 million Americans who support this grassroots effort. Please also visit electoralcollegepetition.com to see how you can get further involved in our movement.
Lately,
it appears Trump has gone back into the field to drag in a whole new
bunch of State contenders.
My favorite is Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, a person you have probably never heard of even though he’s been in Congress since the 1980s and is currently head of the prestigious Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.
Rohrabacher
is also a surfer and former folk singer who once claimed global warming
might be connected to “dinosaur flatulence.” My favorite is Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, a person you have probably never heard of even though he’s been in Congress since the 1980s and is currently head of the prestigious Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.
Don't miss the very interesting articles below, please.
I think the future dinosaur flatulence will be the behaviour of 'Pussy' and his very strange government.
Poor World! Poor America!
The most difficult case in Mrs.Piggle-Wiggle's career
Hello 'Pussy', this is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
You took calls from foreign leaders on unsecured phone lines, without consultung the State Department. We have to change your silly behaviour with a new Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cure. I know you are the most difficult case in my career - but we have to try everything.......................
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sent his brilliant thoughts. Thank you so much dear Wolfgang!
Hi Libi, nice to meet you. Can you feel it?
I'll be the most powerful leader in the world.
Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say
Copyright 2016 by Wolfgang Hampel
All rights reserved
Betty MacDonald was sitting on her egg-shaped cloud and listened to a rather strange guy.
He said to his friends: So sorry to keep you waiting. Very complicated business! Very complicated!
Betty said: Obviously much too complicated for you old toupee!
Besides him ( by the way the First Lady's place ) his 10 year old son was bored to death and listened to this 'exciting' victory speech.
The old man could be his great-grandfather.
The boy was very tired and thought: I don't know what this old guy is talking about. Come on and finish it, please. I'd like to go to bed.
Dear 'great-grandfather' continued and praised the Democratic candidate.
He congratulated her and her family for a very strong campaign although he wanted to put her in jail.
He always called her the most corrupt person ever and repeated it over and over again in the fashion of a Tibetan prayer wheel.
She is so corrupt. She is so corrupt. Do you know how corrupt she is?
Betty MacDonald couldn't believe it when he said: She has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.
Afterwards old toupee praised his parents, wife, children, siblings and friends.
He asked the same question like a parrot all the time:
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
I know you are here!
Betty MacDonald answered: No Pussy they are not! They left the country.
They immigrated to Canada because they are very much afraid of the future in the U.S.A. with you as their leader like the majority of all so-called more or less normal citizens.
By the way keep your finger far away from the pussies and the Red Button, please.
I'm going to fly with my egg-shaped cloud to Canada within a minute too.
Away - away - there is nothing more to say!
I can understand the reason why Betty MacDonald, Barbara Streisand, other artists and several of my friends want to leave the United States of America.
I totally agree with these comments:
This
is incredible! I'll You get what you pay/vote for and Trump is the
epitome of this ideology. America I won't feel bad for you because you
don't need my sympathy for what's coming but I am genuinely scared for
you. 'Forgive them lord for they know not who they do' or maybe they do
but just don't care about their future generations who will suffer for
this long after the culprits have passed away.
Daniel Mount wrote a great article about Betty MacDonald and her garden.
We hope you'll enjoy it very much.
I adore Mount Rainier and Betty MacDonald's outstanding descriptions
Can you remember in which book you can find it?
If so let us know, please and you might be the next Betty MacDonald fan club contest winner.
I hope we'll be able to read Wolfgang Hampel's new very well researched stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett, Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others - very soon.
It' s such a pleasure to read them.
Let's go to magical Betty MacDonald's Vashon Island.
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund and Betty MacDonald fan club research team share their recent Betty MacDonald fan club research results.
Congratulations! They found the most interesting and important info for Wolfgang Hampel's oustanding Betty MacDonald biography.
I enjoy Bradley Craft's story very much.
Don't miss our Betty MacDonald fan club contests, please.
You can win a never published before Alison Bard Burnett interview by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
Good luck!
This CD is a golden treasure because Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett shares unique stories about Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard Jensen, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Nancy and Plum.
Do you have any books by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen with funny or interesting dedications?
If so would you be so kind to share them?
Our next Betty MacDonald fan club project is a collection of these unique dedications.
If you share your dedication from your Betty MacDonald - and Mary Bard Jensen collection you might be the winner of our new Betty MacDonald fan club items.
Thank you so much in advance for your support.
Thank you so much for sending us your favourite Betty MacDonald quote.
More info are coming soon.
Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald and Ma and Pa Kettle biography and Betty MacDonald interviews have fans in 40 countries. I'm one of their many devoted fans.
Many Betty MacDonald - and Wolfgang Hampel fans are very interested in a Wolfgang Hampel CD and DVD with his very funny poems and stories.
We are going to publish new Betty MacDonald essays on Betty MacDonald's gardens and nature in Washington State.
Tell us the names of this mysterious couple please and you can win a very new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is beloved all over the World.
We are so happy that our 'Casanova' is back.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to share very
interesting info on ' Betty MacDonald and the movie The Egg and I '.
Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.
The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952.
Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.
Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Enjoy a great breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.
Don't miss this, please. You'll enjoy it very much.
Excerpts from SVT and TV4 broadcasts from Lucia 2015.
Participating are students from music classes in Gothenburg and Växjö.
Berlin has expressed dismay that a German high school in İstanbul has canceled its traditional Christmas celebration, with teachers at the school even being forbidden to mention the topic of Christmas in their classrooms.
DPA reported that the Turkish administrators of the İstanbul Lisesi, established more than 100 years ago, announced that Christmas traditions and the singing of carols would no longer be part of the curriculum.
The move, which has angered German politicians and officials at the country’s foreign ministry, occurred a week after the school’s choir was prevented from singing at the German Consulate General in Istanbul.
Frank Josef Jung, a deputy from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in charge of religious affairs, called the situation “completely unacceptable” and said that since Germany finances teachers at the school, it should have input into what they teach.
The abrupt cancellation is seen by German politicians as part of a move away from secularism engineered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Die Welt newspaper in a photograph portrayed Erdoğan as the Grinch who stole Christmas, of the famous Dr. Seuss children’s story.
Let's enjoy Christmas time even dear Mr. Erdogan doesn't seem to like it. ( see article below )
Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.
The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952.
Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.
Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Enjoy a great breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.
Don't miss this, please. You'll enjoy it very much.
Excerpts from SVT and TV4 broadcasts from Lucia 2015.
Participating are students from music classes in Gothenburg and Växjö.
Berlin has expressed dismay that a German high school in İstanbul has canceled its traditional Christmas celebration, with teachers at the school even being forbidden to mention the topic of Christmas in their classrooms.
DPA reported that the Turkish administrators of the İstanbul Lisesi, established more than 100 years ago, announced that Christmas traditions and the singing of carols would no longer be part of the curriculum.
The move, which has angered German politicians and officials at the country’s foreign ministry, occurred a week after the school’s choir was prevented from singing at the German Consulate General in Istanbul.
Frank Josef Jung, a deputy from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in charge of religious affairs, called the situation “completely unacceptable” and said that since Germany finances teachers at the school, it should have input into what they teach.
The abrupt cancellation is seen by German politicians as part of a move away from secularism engineered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Die Welt newspaper in a photograph portrayed Erdoğan as the Grinch who stole Christmas, of the famous Dr. Seuss children’s story.
Let's enjoy Christmas time even dear Mr. Erdogan doesn't seem to like it. ( see article below )
By
Sajjad Shaukat for Veterans Today Despite some dissimilarities, the
Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump and Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan share several similarities. Having lack of
political wisdom, both the leaders are…
veteranstoday.com
Take care,
Richard
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Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
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Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
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Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
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Betty MacDonald fan club and Heide Rose
Betty MacDonald fan club fan Greta Larson
Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle - by Nicholas KristofQuicklink submitted By Susan Lee Schwartz
Permalink,
|
1
"Frankly,
it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even
as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union
leader in Indiana. Let’s be clear: This was an attack on America, less
lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s
not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the
C.I.A. is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who
would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a
Russian poodle. Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This
Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government
posts to friends of Moscow,
in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States. "So it’s
critical that the Senate, the news media and the public subject
Tillerson to intense scrutiny. We must be vigilant and recognize what
is afoot!" WOOF!
Read the rest of the story HERE:
At www.nytimes.com
At www.nytimes.com
Trump Is Not the Problem
Donald Trump may
be the ultimate con man, having convinced about 25% of the American
public who voted for him that he was a populist interested in helping
the working class. His recent cabinet appointments of banksters and
corporate elites prove otherwise. Although the prospect of this man as
president for the next 4 years is frightening to even contemplate, it’s
not really Trump that’s the problem. He is just a symptom of the deeper
problem we have in America: the fact that our country is morally and
ethically bankrupt.
For at least the last half century, we have lived in a culture not of self-awareness, but of self absorption — a culture in which concern for the greater good has been replaced by a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. Racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are ingrained in our culture. We have just covered it over with political correctness so we can deny how extensive an issue it really is. But just like an alcoholic, we can’t begin to recover unless we admit we have a problem.
Just try to hint that the US is not the greatest country in the world and you’ll be labeled a traitor, despite the fact that we are number 1 in some of the worst statistics possible. We are first in rates of obesity, divorce, incarceration, gun deaths per capita, infant mortality, rape, murder, and student loan debt, to name just a few. Meanwhile, we are last in paid sick days, paid maternity leave, income equality, and programs that reflect a society that cares for its people.
Far too often, the poor, working-class white population votes against their best interests. It’s easier for them to believe that an immigrant or a person of color is stealing their livelihood than to accept that a wealthy white billionaire doesn’t have their best interests in mind, and that there is no such thing as The American Dream.
The reality is that the system is set up to ensure there will always be a huge gap between the rich and the poor because the elites want it that way and most people don’t care enough to do anything about it. We are a country that does not like to take personal responsibility for anything, particularly if it requires effort. We would rather have someone else take care of everything so we can go back to watching Monday Night Football.
The average American barely gives a passing thought to the suffering we are causing to innocent civilians around the world in the 7 countries on which we are currently dropping bombs. Unless it’s in their own backyard, they just don’t care. Imagine just a single one of those bombs suddenly dropping on your home while you are in the middle of dinner, killing your children, husband, wife. What is unimaginable for us is daily life for some.
For centuries, Western culture has been dominated by white men obsessed with empire-building. They feel it is their God-given right to invade less developed countries, steal their resources at will, and then expect the conquered to be grateful to us for “liberating” them from their backward ways. We commit mass murder around the world and don’t think twice about it. The hubris is astounding, and like Rome, it will ultimately be the instrument of our downfall.
Fears of Trump becoming the next Hitler are unnecessary because we’re already there. Hitler may have gathered the Jews into extermination camps to systematically murder them, but we have been systematically murdering Muslims in their own countries for at least the past 26 years. An estimated 4 million Muslims have been killed due to our wars. The genocide is the same, just under a different façade.
The very founding of our country is a prime example. White Europeans arrived here in the 17th century and began to commit genocide against the indigenous Americans practically from day one. Those atrocities continue to this day in the form of government-approved militarized mercenaries violently attacking peacefully protesting Native Americans with rubber bullets, pepper spray, sound cannons and concussion grenades.
We seem to have forgotten that we were once the immigrants here. Every US citizen, unless they are from one of the many indigenous tribes that were here far before the first pilgrims, has an immigrant ancestor. Yet it’s amazing how many people say it’s the immigrants who are hurting our country. Like your own great-grandparents once did, most immigrants work hard to establish their lives here. A long-term study has shown that immigrants do far more good for the economy than harm; however, the oligarchy wants to distract you from knowing who the real welfare queens are: the banks and our corporate-owned government.
Congress doesn’t want you to know that they are the reason why you have unaffordable health care. They are the reason our youth are drowning in student debt, and could never dream of making nearly as much money as their parents did — all while they find money to bail out the banks. Congress never has a problem funding more than 50% of the annual budget for the benefit of the military industrial complex, and never have to worry about losing their 100% government-paid health insurance.
As Noam Chomsky and Martin Luther King said, America is socialist for the rich and capitalist for the poor. We allow our government to bail out the banks while working people lose their homes. The wealthy like to maintain a comfortable gap between themselves and everyone else. If everyone is wealthy, nobody is. How could they continue to feel superior? The far-right white supremacists (often oddly called alt-right) have massive fears of immigrants and minorities, believing they are the ones responsible for the disappearance of what they always believed to be their racially guaranteed upward mobility.
Our educational system is a joke; the oligarchy does not want an educated population. If Americans were actually taught to think for themselves, they might begin to question government policies. For example, I’ll bet you didn’t know that our income taxes do not fund federal spending. So any government official claiming there is not enough tax money to fund universal health care, higher education, etc. is either ignorant or flat-out lying.
But even if it’s not your “hard-earned dollars” that would pay for these vital programs, what type of person thinks that any human being does not have the right to decent health care? Universal health care is not even a question in every other Western country, all of which have some form of it. People in these countries almost universally state that health care is an inalienable human right.
It’s no wonder the Kardashians and reality TV shows like The X Factor and American Idol are so popular, not to mention Trump’s own show, The Apprentice. We glorify unbridled wealth, cutthroat competition, and cruelty. The meaner and more demeaning, the better. We shore up our huge insecurities by belittling others, whether they are TV contestants, women, or minorities.
None of this will change until we make significant changes to our ethical code. We need to learn from the Native Americans and adopt a different way of looking at our existence on this planet. Much can be learned from what’s happened at Standing Rock. The indigenous peoples of this country understand that everyone is their relative. What harms one of us harms all of us. They have respect for the earth upon which we all must live and which provides us with food and water. They have astoundingly met brutal violence with only love and compassion.
Privatization must end. The earth’s natural resources should be owned by all of humanity collectively. Nobody should have the ability to make a profit on a natural resource. Along with a minimum wage, there also needs to be a maximum wage. No more allowing a small handful of people to hoard money in amounts so large they could never possibly spend it all, when meanwhile their fellow citizens are struggling to feed their children.
We seem to have lost our sense of compassion for other human beings. Yet we wonder how Donald Trump won the presidency? We need to take a serious look in the mirror and see the ways in which Trump is simply a reflection of the darkest parts of ourselves and examine where it comes from, rather than running from it. At that point, we can make conscious changes and become a better people.
A striking example of this is the stirring ceremony that occurred at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in early December, in which US military veterans asked forgiveness from the Native Americans for the numerous crimes the military had committed against them. Recognizing and admitting our part in these atrocities allows for a beginning in healing the world instead of harming it.
We must always try to remember that we are all members of the same human race living on the same fragile planet. When we make significant changes to our outlook on others and on the world around us, we will finally stop getting leaders like Trump.
For at least the last half century, we have lived in a culture not of self-awareness, but of self absorption — a culture in which concern for the greater good has been replaced by a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. Racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are ingrained in our culture. We have just covered it over with political correctness so we can deny how extensive an issue it really is. But just like an alcoholic, we can’t begin to recover unless we admit we have a problem.
Just try to hint that the US is not the greatest country in the world and you’ll be labeled a traitor, despite the fact that we are number 1 in some of the worst statistics possible. We are first in rates of obesity, divorce, incarceration, gun deaths per capita, infant mortality, rape, murder, and student loan debt, to name just a few. Meanwhile, we are last in paid sick days, paid maternity leave, income equality, and programs that reflect a society that cares for its people.
Far too often, the poor, working-class white population votes against their best interests. It’s easier for them to believe that an immigrant or a person of color is stealing their livelihood than to accept that a wealthy white billionaire doesn’t have their best interests in mind, and that there is no such thing as The American Dream.
The reality is that the system is set up to ensure there will always be a huge gap between the rich and the poor because the elites want it that way and most people don’t care enough to do anything about it. We are a country that does not like to take personal responsibility for anything, particularly if it requires effort. We would rather have someone else take care of everything so we can go back to watching Monday Night Football.
The average American barely gives a passing thought to the suffering we are causing to innocent civilians around the world in the 7 countries on which we are currently dropping bombs. Unless it’s in their own backyard, they just don’t care. Imagine just a single one of those bombs suddenly dropping on your home while you are in the middle of dinner, killing your children, husband, wife. What is unimaginable for us is daily life for some.
For centuries, Western culture has been dominated by white men obsessed with empire-building. They feel it is their God-given right to invade less developed countries, steal their resources at will, and then expect the conquered to be grateful to us for “liberating” them from their backward ways. We commit mass murder around the world and don’t think twice about it. The hubris is astounding, and like Rome, it will ultimately be the instrument of our downfall.
Fears of Trump becoming the next Hitler are unnecessary because we’re already there. Hitler may have gathered the Jews into extermination camps to systematically murder them, but we have been systematically murdering Muslims in their own countries for at least the past 26 years. An estimated 4 million Muslims have been killed due to our wars. The genocide is the same, just under a different façade.
The very founding of our country is a prime example. White Europeans arrived here in the 17th century and began to commit genocide against the indigenous Americans practically from day one. Those atrocities continue to this day in the form of government-approved militarized mercenaries violently attacking peacefully protesting Native Americans with rubber bullets, pepper spray, sound cannons and concussion grenades.
We seem to have forgotten that we were once the immigrants here. Every US citizen, unless they are from one of the many indigenous tribes that were here far before the first pilgrims, has an immigrant ancestor. Yet it’s amazing how many people say it’s the immigrants who are hurting our country. Like your own great-grandparents once did, most immigrants work hard to establish their lives here. A long-term study has shown that immigrants do far more good for the economy than harm; however, the oligarchy wants to distract you from knowing who the real welfare queens are: the banks and our corporate-owned government.
Congress doesn’t want you to know that they are the reason why you have unaffordable health care. They are the reason our youth are drowning in student debt, and could never dream of making nearly as much money as their parents did — all while they find money to bail out the banks. Congress never has a problem funding more than 50% of the annual budget for the benefit of the military industrial complex, and never have to worry about losing their 100% government-paid health insurance.
As Noam Chomsky and Martin Luther King said, America is socialist for the rich and capitalist for the poor. We allow our government to bail out the banks while working people lose their homes. The wealthy like to maintain a comfortable gap between themselves and everyone else. If everyone is wealthy, nobody is. How could they continue to feel superior? The far-right white supremacists (often oddly called alt-right) have massive fears of immigrants and minorities, believing they are the ones responsible for the disappearance of what they always believed to be their racially guaranteed upward mobility.
Our educational system is a joke; the oligarchy does not want an educated population. If Americans were actually taught to think for themselves, they might begin to question government policies. For example, I’ll bet you didn’t know that our income taxes do not fund federal spending. So any government official claiming there is not enough tax money to fund universal health care, higher education, etc. is either ignorant or flat-out lying.
But even if it’s not your “hard-earned dollars” that would pay for these vital programs, what type of person thinks that any human being does not have the right to decent health care? Universal health care is not even a question in every other Western country, all of which have some form of it. People in these countries almost universally state that health care is an inalienable human right.
It’s no wonder the Kardashians and reality TV shows like The X Factor and American Idol are so popular, not to mention Trump’s own show, The Apprentice. We glorify unbridled wealth, cutthroat competition, and cruelty. The meaner and more demeaning, the better. We shore up our huge insecurities by belittling others, whether they are TV contestants, women, or minorities.
None of this will change until we make significant changes to our ethical code. We need to learn from the Native Americans and adopt a different way of looking at our existence on this planet. Much can be learned from what’s happened at Standing Rock. The indigenous peoples of this country understand that everyone is their relative. What harms one of us harms all of us. They have respect for the earth upon which we all must live and which provides us with food and water. They have astoundingly met brutal violence with only love and compassion.
Privatization must end. The earth’s natural resources should be owned by all of humanity collectively. Nobody should have the ability to make a profit on a natural resource. Along with a minimum wage, there also needs to be a maximum wage. No more allowing a small handful of people to hoard money in amounts so large they could never possibly spend it all, when meanwhile their fellow citizens are struggling to feed their children.
We seem to have lost our sense of compassion for other human beings. Yet we wonder how Donald Trump won the presidency? We need to take a serious look in the mirror and see the ways in which Trump is simply a reflection of the darkest parts of ourselves and examine where it comes from, rather than running from it. At that point, we can make conscious changes and become a better people.
A striking example of this is the stirring ceremony that occurred at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in early December, in which US military veterans asked forgiveness from the Native Americans for the numerous crimes the military had committed against them. Recognizing and admitting our part in these atrocities allows for a beginning in healing the world instead of harming it.
We must always try to remember that we are all members of the same human race living on the same fragile planet. When we make significant changes to our outlook on others and on the world around us, we will finally stop getting leaders like Trump.
Donald Trump is Russia's 'Manchurian candidate' as 'Saturday Night Live' debuts John Goodman as oil mogul Rex Tillerson
A shirtless Vladimir Putin shimmied into Trump Tower through a chimney to finally meet his President-elect on the holiday-themed episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
“We in Russia, we are so happy that you’re U.S. President. We think you are the best candidate, the smartest candidate — the Manchurian candidate," said SNL cast member Beck Bennett, as the Russian leader.
The sketch show brought actor Alec Baldwin back to the set to taunt Trump and the Russian hack job that may have played a part in Trump’s November election victory. Both FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. have agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia meddled in the close race, officials said Friday.
Chance celebrates Obama’s last Christmas in office on 'SNL'
Saturday Night Live's cold open saw John Goodman's Rex Tillerson plot with Beck Bennett's Vladimir Putin as Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump looked on.
(NBC)SNL’s interpretation of the Russian strongman snuck into Trump’s Manhattan office like Santa Claus to deliver a Christmas present — an Elf on the Shelf.
“It’s fun, you just put it right here next to your internet router,” Putin said of the suspicious holiday toy, depicted in a children's book as a spy for Santa.
An NBC report alleged Putin, a former KGB agent, personally oversaw the hacking operation to help Trump win, and as a result, regain its economic footing globally — possibly through oil dealings as depicted by SNL.
Alec Baldwin blasts Trump's misspellings ahead of 'SNL' return
Putin appeared to lose all eyes for Baldwin’s Trump when Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Rex Tillerson walked through the door.
The oil mogul, portrayed by actor John Goodman, shared a secret handshake with Putin and gushed over future oil plans during the cold open.
Bennett's Putin give Baldwin's Trump a suspicious gift.
(NBC)Trump was silent on Twitter following Baldwin’s appearance — in contrast to his previous reactions to the NBC show.
SNL jabs at President-elect Donald Trump's ego through his mind
Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost said Trump repeatedly shrugging off the former Cold War rival’s hacking allegations would be comparable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt saying “we don’t know it was Japan” after the Pearl Harbor attack.
“It could have been some fat guy on a couch somewhere,” Jost mused.
Although cast member Kate McKinnon has mostly resigned her portrayal of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for Trump’s senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, she returned to the role to lampoon “Love Actually.”
McKinnon, as Clinton, offered to buy off an electoral voter with a $1,000 check to protest Trump’s election win.
Trump calls Alec Baldwin’s ‘SNL’ impression 'mean-spirited'
“You don’t even have to vote for me. I’m coo,” Clinton said, fumbling through a stack of cue cards like Andrew Lincoln’s character in the 2003 Christmas flick. “Just vote for literally anyone else, like John Kasich, Tom Hanks, The Rock — a rock.”
The Electoral College — 538 men and women — is expected to vote for Trump on Monday. If they fail to confirm Trump’s electoral win, Jost’s co-host Michael Che predicts Trump will react like a chimpanzee with a machine gun — poorly.
“Enjoy your holiday but keep in mind, if Donald Trump becomes president, he will kill us all,” the faux Clinton added.
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SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist
Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle
In
1972, President Richard Nixon’s White House dispatched burglars to bug
Democratic Party offices. That Watergate burglary and related “dirty
tricks,” such as releasing mice at a Democratic press conference and
paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a Democratic
candidate, nauseated Americans — and impelled some of us kids at the
time to pursue journalism.
Now
in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more
staggering. Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats’ digital
offices and tried to change the election outcome. President Obama on
Friday suggested that this was probably directed by Russia’s president,
saying, “Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin.”
In
Watergate, the break-in didn’t affect the outcome of the election. In
2016, we don’t know for sure. There were other factors, but it’s
possible that Russia’s theft and release of the emails provided the
margin for Donald Trump’s victory.
The C.I.A. says it has “high confidence” that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and, according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree with that conclusion.
Both
Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a
cover-up and Trump by denouncing the C.I.A. and, incredibly, defending
Russia from the charges that it tried to subvert our election. I never
thought I would see a dispute between America’s intelligence community
and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with
the dictator.
Let’s
be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but
still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s not that Trump and Putin
were colluding to steal an election. But if the C.I.A. is right, Russia
apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet
exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a Russian poodle.
In
Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as
President George W. Bush’s poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq
war. The fear is that this time Putin may have interfered to acquire an
ally who likewise will roll over for him.
Frankly,
it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even
as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union
leader in Indiana.
Now
we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting
in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow,
in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.
Rex Tillerson,
Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager.
Yet it’s notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had
decorated Tillerson with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”
Whatever
our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia’s
interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the
hands of a Putin friend?
Tillerson’s
closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump’s other
Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn,
accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A
ledger shows
$12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to
Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family
itself has business connections with Russia.
It’s
true that there will be counterbalances, including Gen. James Mattis,
the former Marine commander who has no illusions about Moscow and is
expected to be confirmed as defense secretary. But over all it looks as
if the Trump administration will be remarkably pro-Putin — astonishing
considering Putin’s Russia has killed journalists, committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and threatened the peaceful order in Europe.
So
it’s critical that the Senate, the news media and the public subject
Tillerson to intense scrutiny. There are other issues to explore as
well, including his role in enabling corruption in Chad, one of the
poorest countries in the world. The same is true of his role in complicity with the government of Angola, where oil corruption turned the president’s daughter into a billionaire even as children died of poverty and disease at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world.
Maybe
all this from Russia to Angola was just Tillerson trying to maximize
his company’s revenue, and he will act differently as secretary of
state. Maybe. But I’m skeptical that his ideology would change in
fundamental ways.
This
is not only about Tillerson just as the 1972 break-in was not only
about the Watergate building complex. This is about the integrity of
American democracy and whether a foreign dictator should be rewarded for
attacking the United States. It is about whether we are led by a
president or a poodle.
Ross Douthat and Maureen Dowd are off today.
I invite you to sign up for my free, twice-weekly email newsletter. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter (@NickKristof).Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
Berlin uneasy as Christmas celebration banned at German school in İstanbul
Berlin has expressed dismay that a German high school in İstanbul has canceled its traditional Christmas celebration, with teachers at the school even being forbidden to mention the topic of Christmas in their classrooms.
DPA reported that the Turkish administrators of the İstanbul Lisesi, established more than 100 years ago, announced that Christmas traditions and the singing of carols would no longer be part of the curriculum.
The move, which has angered German politicians and officials at the country’s foreign ministry, occurred a week after the school’s choir was prevented from singing at the German Consulate General in Istanbul.
“We do not understand the surprising decision of the leadership at İstanbul Lisesi,” said the foreign ministry.
“It is a great pity that the good tradition of the intercultural exchange in the pre-Christmas period was suspended at a school with a long history of German-Turkish” friendship, the government said, according to Deutsche Welle (DW).
The German Foreign Office called the decision “regrettable” and said it would seek dialogue with its Turkish partners over the incident, according to DPA, which also reported that the school itself denied on its website Sunday night that it had passed a Christmas ban.
Frank Josef Jung, a deputy from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in charge of religious affairs, called the situation “completely unacceptable” and said that since Germany finances teachers at the school, it should have input into what they teach.
The abrupt cancellation is seen by German politicians as part of a move away from secularism engineered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Die Welt newspaper in a photograph portrayed Erdoğan as the Grinch who stole Christmas, of the famous Dr. Seuss children’s story.
How a Putin Fan Overseas Pushed Pro-Trump Propaganda to Americans
The Patriot News Agency website popped up in July, soon after it became clear that Donald J. Trump
would win the Republican presidential nomination, bearing a logo of a
red, white and blue eagle and the motto “Built by patriots, for
patriots.”
Tucked
away on a corner of the site, next to links for Twitter and YouTube, is
a link to another social media platform that most Americans have never
heard of: VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
It is a clue that Patriot News, like many sites that appeared out of
nowhere and pumped out pro-Trump hoaxes tying his opponent Hillary Clinton to Satanism, pedophilia and other conspiracies, is actually run by foreigners based overseas.
But
while most of those others seem be the work of young, apolitical
opportunists cashing in on a conservative appetite for viral nonsense,
operators of Patriot News had an explicitly partisan motivation: getting
Mr. Trump elected.
Patriot
News — whose postings were viewed and shared tens of thousands of times
in the United States — is among a constellation of websites run out of
the United Kingdom that are linked to James Dowson, a far-right
political activist who advocated Britain’s exit from the European Union and is a fan of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. A vocal proponent of Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant movements in Europe, Mr. Dowson, 52, has spoken at a conference
of far-right leaders in Russia and makes no secret of his hope that Mr.
Trump will usher in an era of rapprochement with Mr. Putin.
His
dabbling in the American presidential election adds an ideological
element that has been largely missing from the still-emerging landscape
of websites and Facebook pages that bombarded American voters with
misinformation and propaganda. Far from the much-reported Macedonian
teenagers running fake news factories solely for profit, Mr. Dowson made
it his mission, according to messages posted on one of his sites, to
“spread devastating anti-Clinton, pro-Trump memes and sound bites into
sections of the population too disillusioned with politics to have taken
any notice of conventional campaigning.”
“Together, people like us helped change the course of history,” one message said, adding in another: “Every single
one of you who forwarded even just one of our posts on social media
contributed to the stunning victory for Trump, America and God.”
In
a recent email interview from Belgrade, where he has met with Serbian
nationalists, Mr. Dowson explained how his decision to establish an
American social media presence was similar to the move into European
markets by Breitbart News, the conservative provocateur media operation
run by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist.
“Simple
truth is that after 40 years of the right having no voice because the
media was owned by the enemy, we were FORCED to become incredibly good
at alternative media in a way the left simply can’t grasp or handle,”
Mr. Dowson said. “Bottom line is: BREXIT, TRUMP and much more to
follow.”
While
it is easy to overstate the influence of fringe elements whose overall
numbers remain very small, the explosion of fake news and propaganda
sites and their possible impact on the presidential election have
ignited alarm across the American political spectrum. A recent study
found that most people who read fabricated stories on Facebook — such
as a widely circulated hoax about Pope Francis endorsing Mr. Trump —
were inclined to believe them.
Then
there is the added element of Russian meddling. The Central
Intelligence Agency has concluded that Moscow put its thumb on the scale
for Mr. Trump through the release of hacked Democratic emails, which
provided fodder for many of the most pernicious false attacks on Mrs.
Clinton on social media.
Some of those attacks found a home on Russian websites such as the one for Katehon,
a right-wing Christian think tank aligned with Mr. Putin. Katehon
recirculated anti-Clinton conspiracies under headlines like “Bloody
Hillary: 5 Mysterious Murders Linked to Clinton.”
Another Russian site that urged support for Mr. Trump, called “Just Trump It,”
is linked to the International Russian Conservative Forum, an annual
gathering of far-right leaders in St. Petersburg that has featured Mr.
Dowson, among others, as a speaker. The site, which seems mostly aimed
at selling Trump T-shirts, was registered to an individual at a Russian
company that trademarked a logo used to certify that merchandise was not
made with migrant labor.
Some
analysts see danger signs in the nexus of Russian interests and
far-right agitators in Europe and the United States. Social media can
amplify even the most obscure voices, giving them a stage from which to
broadcast a distorted message to credulous audiences.
“These messages seep into the mainstream,” said Alina Polyakova, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council,
a nonpartisan international affairs institute in Washington. “They may
have been extreme or fringe at one point in time, but they have been
incredibly influential in shaping people’s views about key geopolitical
events in a very specific direction.”
Russia
is particularly adept at playing this game, Ms. Polyakova said. “Moscow
specifically encourages and facilitates” the spreading of propaganda
through proxies, she said, as well as through events like the Russian
conservative forum, which showcases views and narratives favored by the
Putin government.
At
the inaugural forum in March 2015, Mr. Dowson praised Mr. Putin as a
strong defender of traditional values, while belittling President Obama
and the United States itself as “feminized men.” In the email interview,
Mr. Dowson said he was not supported by Russia in any way, and he
accused critics of trying
“I
look on this rebirth of McCarthy-type anti-Russian hysteria by the LEFT
as a hilarious reaction born out of the left’s inability to realize
THEY elected Trump, not me, not the Russians, not even the right,” he
said via email.
A colorful if somewhat enigmatic figure in Britain — The Times of London recently described him as “the invisible man of Britain’s far right” — Mr. Dowson, at first blush, would not be an obvious mouthpiece for Russia.
Formerly
a church minister in Northern Ireland and the father of nine, he became
involved in anti-abortion campaigns, joined the British National Party
in the mid-2000s and, later, founded Britain First, a stridently
anti-immigrant group opposed to what it called a creeping Islamic threat
to traditional British values. He publicly split with the group in 2014
after some of its leaders started invading mosques and threatening
Muslims, which he criticized as un-Christian and counterproductive.
While
involved with Britain First, Mr. Dowson made deft use of social media
and websites to promote its work and convey the impression of a mass
following. A British watchdog group called Hope Not Hate, which has tracked Mr. Dowson’s online activities, concluded
that he has “a rather canny knack for building up protest groups and
movements on the basis that it was your Christian duty to follow his
work.”
Mr.
Dowson claims to have reached millions of Americans across all of his
online platforms in the run-up to the November presidential election, a
number that could not be verified, in part, because he would not confirm
all of his sites. Online visits to Patriot News
did not come close to that, although when combined with several other
sites that appear to be connected to Mr. Dowson, the total number edges
above a million; most viewers were in Britain.
Whatever
the precise numbers, there is little question that postings on the
sites and Facebook pages linked to him were viewed and shared hundreds
of thousands of times. Many of the postings appear to be lifted from
other conspiracy websites, repackaged and launched back into the social
media maelstrom. Another site that trafficked heavily in pro-Trump news
was run by Knights Templar International,
a militant religious group that Mr. Dowson is involved in, which has
recently supported anti-immigrant militias patrolling border areas in
Bulgaria and Hungary.
For
Mr. Dowson, such activities are in keeping with his philosophy that
traditional Christian values are under siege because of feckless
leadership by America and European powers. The success of Mr. Trump, he
said, is the logical result of voters’ rejection of the weakness of
global elites.
Mr. Dowson has long been optimistic about the effectiveness of social media. During the 2015 conservative forum in Russia, he spoke presciently about the looming online battle for the attention of American voters.
“We
have the ability to take a video from today and put it in half of every
single household in the United States of America, where these people
can for the first time learn the truth, because their own media tell
lies, they tell lies about Russia,” Mr. Dowson said then.
“We
have to use popular culture to reach into the living rooms of the youth
of America, of Britain, France, Germany, and bring them in,” he said.
“Then we can get them the message.”
Trump has been lying about the Russian hack. He just accidentally admitted it himself.
(Mindaugas Kulbis/Associated Press)
THE MORNING PLUM:
In recent days, Donald Trump has been spinning a new narrative about CIA charges of Russian interference in our election: The administration did not leak the news of this finding until after Trump won, which shows this is just an after-the-fact effort to undercut the significance of his victory over Hillary Clinton. As Trump tweeted Thursday: “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?”
This is not some small offhand remark. It represents an effort by Trump — one that is going to continue — to construct an alternative narrative to replace the increasingly substantiated one in which Russia may have in fact tried to interfere in our election to help him, which would obviously carry enormous significance on many levels.
But Friday, Trump send out a new tweet that accidentally reveals that he knows this entire narrative is a lie:
Trump is referring here to news that broke in late October: That a hacked email showed that interim DNC chair Donna Brazile may have leaked a Democratic primary debate question to Clinton’s campaign in advance. Brazile publicly blamed this leak on Russian hackers who were out to divide Democrats by feeding the perception among Bernie Sanders supporters that the DNC was putting its thumb on the scales for her. This built on a formal statement that the intelligence community put out earlier in October declaring itself “confident” that Russia was trying to interfere in the elections by hacking into DNC emails.
And so, by referring to this episode, what Trump is inadvertently revealing here is that, yes, the complaint about Russian hacking to hurt Clinton did in fact precede the election, and this was widely and publicly known. Of course, there is ample other evidence that Trump is fully aware of this. The intel community had publicly declared it weeks before the election. Trump had reportedly been privately briefed on it by U.S. officials. Trump was confronted with evidence of the hack at a debate with Clinton that was watched by tens of millions of people. At the debate, he cast doubt on the notion that Russia had hacked the materials to hurt Clinton. And yet, as Mark Murray points out, Trump himself widely referenced the material dug up in the hacks at rallies, where he used that material to — wait for it — try to damage Clinton.
Obama says U.S. will take action against Russia for hacks
President Obama said in an interview with NPR
on Dec. 15, that, "we need to take action and we will, at the time and
place of our own choosing," against Russia for its involvement in
cyberattacks during this year's election.
(Reuters)
Once again, we do not know for sure that Russia interfered. But, should more evidence emerge, Trump’s position on this is very likely to grow unsustainable. Confronted with evidence that a foreign power may have tried to swing our election — something that’s being widely condemned by Republicans — Trump continues to refuse to take it seriously (even as his own advisers gamely try to pretend he does). Instead, Trump appears to harbor boundless confidence that he can spin any substitute story line he wants, and that, no matter how deeply absurd it is, his supporters will eagerly buy into the alternate reality he’s concocted for them.
How long can Trump maintain this posture? It’s possible that the intelligence community will leak more evidence of Russian interference in coming days. What’s more, there will soon be confirmation hearings for two retired generals Trump has picked for his Cabinet — James Mattis as defense secretary, and John Kelly as head of the department of homeland security. They will be asked about the intelligence community’s confidence that Russia did try to swing our election, and what should be done about it. One presumes they will treat the topic with the gravity it deserves. Meanwhile, Trump — and let me remind you, he will soon be doing this as president of the United States — will be dithering around with tweets designed to spin his own reality about what happened that everyone knows is straight out of la-la land, including (presumably) him.
That can’t go on for too much longer. Can it?
****************************************************************
* GOP MAY TRY TO REPLACE OBAMACARE IN PIECES: CNN reports that GOP aides have settled on a process that involves repealing big chunks of the ACA through a simple majority “reconciliation” process, followed by replace:
Republican aides are saying there may not be one overarching “replace” bill. One senior Republican aide said the party will look for legislative opportunities to get “pieces” of Obamacare reform through — a process that could drag out for years.Republicans will tell you that they have “leverage” to force Senate Democrats to support these “pieces” of “replace.” But Dems don’t have to play along with this.
* GOP REPLACE PLAN WILL LIKELY COVER FEWER PEOPLE: The New York Times reports that the American Medical Association is calling for the GOP replace plan to cover as many people as currently are covered on Obamacare. But:
It’s likely, then, that the replace plan will cover far fewer people, and this is how it will be spun.House Republicans, preparing for a rapid legislative strike on the law next month, emphasize a different measure of success. “Our goal here is to make sure that everybody can buy coverage or find coverage if they choose to,” a House leadership aide told journalists on the condition of anonymity.
* VERY LITTLE SUPPORT FOR REPEAL: A new CBS News poll finds that only 25 percent of Americans support repealing Obamacare entirely, while 63 percent say it needs minor changes, and another 9 percent say leave it as it is. Support for repeal is down 10 points since January.
Of course, this doesn’t really count, because the public hasn’t yet seen the “terrific” replacement Republicans and Trump will put forth, and Americans are gonna love it big league.
* DEMS PLAN BIG FIGHT AGAINST TRUMP NOMINEES: The Associated Press reports that Senate Democrats plan to use the hearings into Trump’s nominees to position themselves for the 2018 elections by persuading working-class whites he’s not on their side:
To highlight what they say is the hypocrisy of Trump’s campaign promise to be a champion for the economically struggling little guy, they’ll focus on the nominees’ wealth, ties to Wall Street and willingness to privatize Medicare, among other issues. In some cases, they’ll seek to drag out the process by demanding more information and ensuring a full airing of potential conflicts of interest.All those Goldman Sachs and oil and gas executives give Dems a lot to work with, but let’s face it, the 2018 map is awful for them.
* CLINTON CAMPAIGN CHAIR RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT FBI: Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta has written a new op-ed in The Post that asks why the FBI didn’t try harder to notify the DNC that it had been hacked:
This is a real escalation — it represents an effort to get the press to shine a brighter light on the FBI’s broader conduct throughout this whole election (see: Comey, James).I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT “help desk.” … at nearly the exact same time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server.
* YES, TRUMP IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY: Two Harvard professors of government publish a must-read today that relies on a political scientist’s metric for determining whether a politician is “anti-democratic,” and delivers the bad news:
His indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments. Mr. Trump tests positive. … In the event of a war, a major terrorist attack or large-scale riots or protests — all of which are entirely possible — a president with authoritarian tendencies and institutions that have come unmoored could pose a serious threat to American democracy. … The warning signs are real.And as I keep shouting at you, congressional Republicans really must be seen as a crucial part of this story.
Comments
The Post Recommends
Trump’s pro-Russian posture is neither unprecedented nor likely to last very long.
"If Russia, or some other
entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why
did they only complain after Hillary lost?"
Pants on Fire! Trump tweet about White House, Russian hacking probe
President-elect Donald Trump continues to question whether
the Russian government tried to interfere in the U.S. election. Trump
has said it could have been China who hacked emails of Democratic
operatives and the Democratic National Committee. Or someone "sitting on
their bed who weighs 400 pounds."
And if it is the Russians, why did the White House wait so long to act? Trump asked on Twitter.
"If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?" Trump tweeted early Dec. 15.
Only that’s not true. The administration announced its findings a month before Election Day, and the White House’s announcement prompted a memorable exchange at the final presidential debate.
Who’s the puppet?
On Oct. 7 — a few months after WikiLeaks released a trove of DNC emails, but the same day WikiLeaks released emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta — President Barack Obama’s administration said it was confident Russia was behind the cyberattacks.
"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations," read an Oct. 7 joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The U.S. Intelligence Community consists of 17 agencies and organizations within the executive branch, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on the group’s behalf.
Their statement said releases of alleged hacked emails on DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks and by the online persona Guccifer 2.0 were "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
"These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process," the statement said. "Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."
Clinton used the statement as ammo when she referred to Trump as Putin’s preferred "puppet" in the Oct. 19 presidential debate. ("No puppet, you’re the puppet," Trump replied.) When Clinton brought up the intelligence community’s statement, Trump said, "She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else."
Post-election doubts
After the election, Trump has been just as dismissive about Russian involvement.
Regarding Russia’s involvement in the DNC email hack, Trump told Time magazine (which named him Person of the Year), "I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered."
On Dec. 12, Trump also questioned the timing of concerns about election-related hacks, tweeting, "Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?"
Republican and Democratic leaders have raised concerns about Russia’s role in the election and have called for a congressional investigation.
According to a New York Times investigation, Obama warned Putin about the cyberhacking and potential U.S. retaliation in person at the G-20 summit in China.
The administration, however, chose to issue the joint written statement from Homeland Security and the national intelligence director rather than a more public rebuke from Obama. "It was far less dramatic than the president’s appearance in the press room two years before to directly accuse the North Koreans of attacking Sony," the New York Times noted.
Obama was aware of Russian hackers previously targeting the State Department, White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the New York Times reported, but he chose not to publicly call out Russians or issue sanctions out of "fear of escalating a cyberwar, and concern that the United States needed Russia’s cooperation in negotiations over Syria."
Our ruling
Trump tweeted, "If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?"
About a month before the Nov. 8 election, the Obama administration accused Russia of interfering in the U.S. elections, directing the release of emails "from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."
This didn’t happen under the radar. Trump was confronted with it at the final presidential debate.
For a ridiculously wrong statement, we rate it Pants on Fire!
And if it is the Russians, why did the White House wait so long to act? Trump asked on Twitter.
"If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?" Trump tweeted early Dec. 15.
Only that’s not true. The administration announced its findings a month before Election Day, and the White House’s announcement prompted a memorable exchange at the final presidential debate.
Who’s the puppet?
On Oct. 7 — a few months after WikiLeaks released a trove of DNC emails, but the same day WikiLeaks released emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta — President Barack Obama’s administration said it was confident Russia was behind the cyberattacks.
"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations," read an Oct. 7 joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The U.S. Intelligence Community consists of 17 agencies and organizations within the executive branch, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on the group’s behalf.
Their statement said releases of alleged hacked emails on DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks and by the online persona Guccifer 2.0 were "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
"These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process," the statement said. "Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."
Clinton used the statement as ammo when she referred to Trump as Putin’s preferred "puppet" in the Oct. 19 presidential debate. ("No puppet, you’re the puppet," Trump replied.) When Clinton brought up the intelligence community’s statement, Trump said, "She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else."
Post-election doubts
After the election, Trump has been just as dismissive about Russian involvement.
Regarding Russia’s involvement in the DNC email hack, Trump told Time magazine (which named him Person of the Year), "I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered."
On Dec. 12, Trump also questioned the timing of concerns about election-related hacks, tweeting, "Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?"
Republican and Democratic leaders have raised concerns about Russia’s role in the election and have called for a congressional investigation.
According to a New York Times investigation, Obama warned Putin about the cyberhacking and potential U.S. retaliation in person at the G-20 summit in China.
The administration, however, chose to issue the joint written statement from Homeland Security and the national intelligence director rather than a more public rebuke from Obama. "It was far less dramatic than the president’s appearance in the press room two years before to directly accuse the North Koreans of attacking Sony," the New York Times noted.
Obama was aware of Russian hackers previously targeting the State Department, White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the New York Times reported, but he chose not to publicly call out Russians or issue sanctions out of "fear of escalating a cyberwar, and concern that the United States needed Russia’s cooperation in negotiations over Syria."
Our ruling
Trump tweeted, "If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?"
About a month before the Nov. 8 election, the Obama administration accused Russia of interfering in the U.S. elections, directing the release of emails "from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."
This didn’t happen under the radar. Trump was confronted with it at the final presidential debate.
For a ridiculously wrong statement, we rate it Pants on Fire!
John Podesta: Something is deeply broken at the FBI
John Podesta speaks in Washington. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)
John Podesta was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The more we learn about the Russian plot to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and elect Donald Trump,
and the failure of the FBI to adequately respond, the more shocking it
gets. The former acting director of the CIA has called the Russian
cyberattack “the political equivalent of 9/11.”
Just as after the real 9/11, we need a robust, independent
investigation into what went wrong inside the government and how to
better protect our country in the future.
As the former chair of the Clinton campaign and a direct target of Russian hacking,
I understand just how serious this is. So I was surprised to read in
the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in
September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials.
Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT “help desk.” As a former
head of the FBI cyber division told the Times, this is a baffling
decision: “We are not talking about an office that is in the middle of
the woods of Montana.”
What takes this
from baffling to downright infuriating is that at nearly the exact same
time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to
raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys
from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server.
Seven reactions to CIA assessment of Russia’s role in presidential election
President-elect Donald Trump as well as
Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Dec. 11 reacted to the CIA’s
assessment that Russia intervened to help Trump win the election.
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
This trip was part of what FBI Director James B. Comey described
as a “painstaking” investigation of Clinton’s emails, “requiring
thousands of hours of effort” from dozens of agents who conducted at
least 80 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. Of
course, as Comey himself concluded, in the end, there was no case; it was not even a close call.
Comparing
the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the
seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to
subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the
FBI.
Comey justified his handling of the
email case by citing “intense public interest.” He felt so strongly
that he broke long-established precedent and disregarded strong guidance
from the Justice Department with his infamous letter just 11 days before the election. Yet he refused to join the rest of the intelligence community
in a statement about the Russian cyberattack because he reportedly
didn’t want to appear “political.” And both before and after the
election, the FBI has refused to say whether it is investigating Trump’s
ties to Russia.
There are now reports that Vladimir Putin personally directed the covert campaign to elect Trump. So are teams of FBI agents busy looking into the reported meeting
in Moscow this summer between Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy
adviser, and the Putin aide in charge of Russian intelligence on the U.S. election? What about evidence that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks
and knew in advance that my hacked emails were about to be leaked? Are
thousands of FBI person-hours being devoted to uncovering Trump’s
tangled web of debts and business deals with foreign entities in Russia and elsewhere?
Meanwhile,
House Republicans who had an insatiable appetite for investigating
Clinton have been resistant to probing deeply into Russia’s efforts to
swing the election to Trump. The media, by gleefully publishing the
gossipy fruits of Russian hacks, became what the Times itself calls “a
de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.”
But
the FBI’s role is particularly troubling because of its power and
responsibility — and because this is part of a trend. The Justice
Department’s Inspector General issued a damning report this summer about
the FBI’s failure to prioritize cyberthreats more broadly.
The
election is over and the damage is done, but the threat from Russia and
other potential aggressors remains urgent and demands a serious and
sustained response.
First,
the Obama administration should quickly declassify as much as possible
concerning what is known about the Russian hack, as requested by seven
Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Second,
the administration should brief members of the electoral college on the
extent and manner of Russia’s interference in our election before they
vote on Dec. 19, as requested by a bipartisan group of electors.
Third,
Congress should authorize a far-reaching, bipartisan independent
investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission. The public deserves to
know exactly what happened, why and what can be done to prevent future
attacks. Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) have introduced legislation to authorize such an investigation.
Finally,
Congress should more vigorously exercise its oversight to determine why
the FBI responded overzealously in the Clinton case and insufficiently
in the Russian case. The FBI should also clarify whether there is an
ongoing investigation into Trump, his associates and their ties to
Russia. If ever there were a case of “intense public interest,” this is
it. What’s broken in the FBI must be fixed and quickly.
Read more here: Eric Chenoweth: Americans keep looking away from the election’s most alarming story
The Post’s View: ‘Lessons learned’ about Russia
Paul Musgrave: If you’re even asking if Russia hacked the election, Russia got what it wanted
White House: Trump 'obviously' knew Russia hacks were benefiting him
White House: Trump knew Russia hacked Clinton 01:21
Story highlights
- Russia's interference in the US election is coming into clearer focus
- Earnest defended the White House against accusations they were slow to act
Washington (CNN)President-elect
Donald Trump was "obviously aware" that Russia meddled in the US
election to benefit his own campaign, the White House said Wednesday.
Citing
Trump's own suggestion over the summer that Moscow locate missing
emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest said the beneficiary of Russia's cyberintrusions
was clear.
"There
was ample evidence that was known long before the election, and in most
cases long before October, about the Trump campaign in Russia,
everything from the Republican nominee himself calling on Russia to hack
his opponent," Earnest said. "It might be an indication that he was
obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he had
available to him, that Russia was involved and their involvement was
having a negative impact on his opponent's campaign."
Earnest
was speaking as the extent of Russia's interference in the US election
is coming into clearer focus. The CIA has told a group of top US
senators that Russia's hacking was aimed at helping Trump, a finding
that's caused angst among some Democrats, who believe the White House
should have provided more details about the hacking ahead of the
election.
The Obama
administration, through a statement from the Director of National
Intelligence, did identify Russia as the culprit in early October. But
private assessments had pinned the blame on Moscow far earlier.
Earnest
defended the White House and President Barack Obama against accusations
they were slow to act, saying it was essential all 17 US intelligence
agencies completed their reviews before making the information public.
He
insisted the administration didn't want to appear politically motivated
in naming Russia as the culprit in the election meddling.
"It
would have been inappropriate for White House figures, including the
President of the United States, to be rushing the intelligence community
to expedite their analysis of this situation, because we were concerned
about the negative impact it was having on the President's preferred
candidate in the presidential election," Earnest said.
"That
would have been all the more damaging in an environment where you have
the Republican nominee without evidence suggesting the election was
rigged," he continued.
Trump repeatedly made the claim the election was rigged against him, an allegation Obama said was harmful for democracy.
Helping Trump win isn’t a sign of Russian strength. It’s a sign of Russian weakness.
There’s a lot to parse when it comes to Russia’s role in the US election — both the overwhelming evidence
that it interfered in the vote and the recently disclosed CIA
conclusion that it did so in order to help get Donald Trump elected. But
there’s an even more fundamental question that needs to be answered:
What the hell are the Russians thinking?
Interfering in a US election is a dangerous game. Imagine
if Hillary Clinton had won — as virtually every pundit and statistical
model was predicting at the time that Russia started leaking hacked
emails of Clinton allies. The Russians would have infuriated the most powerful person in the world.
That didn’t happen, and the US instead elected the most
Kremlin-friendly presidential candidate in recent American history. But
it’s not clear that Russia will get off scot-free, with lawmakers from both parties calling for as-yet-unspecified punitive measures
designed to retaliate for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 elections
and to deter Russia from trying to meddle in elections to come.
So why take the risk? Part of the answer has to do solely
with Trump’s jarringly positive views of Russian President Vladimir
Putin and his willingness to embrace policies — like potentially pulling
the US out of NATO — that have long been among the Russian strongman’s
top strategic objectives. Compare this with Clinton’s long record of
hawkishness on Russia, and Trump was (from the Kremlin’s perspective) a
far better choice.
But there’s a deeper answer, according to several Russia
experts: The Putin government is much weaker than it appears, and the
hack comes from a position of weakness, not confidence.
Their argument is that Moscow is outclassed militarily by
the US and its NATO allies and buckling economically under the weight
of international sanctions and low oil prices. It’s a country that’s
very far from reaching the heights of power that Putin wants for it.
The hack, on this analysis, is the clearest evidence yet
of how far Putin is willing to go to weaken his rivals and thus raise
Russia’s relative strength. He’s not trying to repair his own
government; he’s trying to damage those of other countries. With a
democracy like the US, the best way to do that is to use a large and
sophisticated propaganda campaign to shake confidence in the election
and elect a threat to the established Western order like Trump.
“The military balance is grim; the economic balance is
grim. And so how do you deal with that?” asks Dan Nexon, a professor at
Georgetown University who studies great power politics. “[Information
warfare] is pretty much what the Russians have going for them.”
Trump’s instincts are a lot friendlier to Putin than Clinton’s
Nobody really knows what Donald Trump will do as
president. But if his policy ideas voiced during the campaign were a
good guide, the Kremlin will have reason to celebrate.
Trump has praised the Russian bombing campaign in Syria,
supported moves like Brexit that destabilized Russia’s European rivals,
and personally praised Putin. Most importantly, he has mused about
weakening American commitment to NATO. Nothing Putin could do on his own
would help Russia’s standing on the world stage and regional influence
more than the collapse of the Cold War–era military alliance.
Now, we don’t know how exactly how seriously to
take Trump’s musings about NATO. He could change his tune once in
office, given the immense pressure that would come from lawmakers,
allies, and the American security establishment. It’s hard to say, and
uncertainty when it comes to America is definitely worrying to Russian
security people.
What is clear, though, is that Putin and his allies really didn’t like Hillary Clinton.
“Hillary is the worst option [from the Russian point of
view],” Fyodor Lukyanov, the chair of Russia's Council on Foreign and
Defense Policy and an influential voice in Russia’s security
establishment, told Vox last year. “There is a widespread view that she personally hates Putin.”
The Kremlin saw her proposals for a no-fly zone in Syria
and a history of aggressive criticism of Russian foreign policy as
strong evidence that the US would be more confrontational toward Russia
with President Clinton in the White House. Even if the Russians aren’t
convinced that Trump would be good for them, they could very well think
he’s better than the alternative.
“I was in Moscow just last week ... and my sense is
they’re concerned and confused about what a Trump presidency means,”
Alina Polyakova, the deputy director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center
at the Atlantic Council, tells me. “Trump is absolutely a risk. [But]
it was worth the risk, from the Kremlin’s point of view.”
The Putin regime is much weaker than you think
But the mere fact that the Russians preferred Trump to
Clinton doesn’t explain why they’d be willing to actively support him.
There were doubtless US elections during and after the Cold War where
the Russians had a preferred candidate, but Moscow has never intervened
as aggressively as it appears to have done in 2016.
“What’s new is how brazen and explicit it has been,” Polyakova says.
So why? Why would the Russians so boldly attempt to elect
their preferred candidate, knowing that the intervention carried a
serious risk of American retaliation?
Some experts argue that the key variable here is Russian weakness, not strength. To understand this, you need to understand Russia’s strategic situation a little bit better.
By any metric
— defense spending, control of advanced military tech, you name it —
the United States is by far the world’s most dominant military power. A recent book
by Dartmouth’s Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth attempted to
quantify the degree of American dominance in these terms. Their findings
were unequivocal.
“Our investigation shows that the United States
indisputably remains the sole superpower, and the gap between it and the
other powers ... remains very large,” they write.
Russia, by contrast, fell into disrepair after the collapse of the Soviet Union — and modernization efforts under Putin
have failed to come close to making up the gap. When you add America’s
might to that of its NATO allies, some of which have increased defense
spending in response to Russian military adventurism in Syria and
Ukraine, the picture for the Kremlin looks quite bad — “much, much
weaker,” as Nexon put it in our conversation.
The Russian economy, likewise, is in dismal shape. Russia
has depended heavily on trade in natural resources, particularly oil
and gas; the recent collapse in oil prices and spread of shale gas in
the West has been painful for Russia. Western sanctions, punishment for
its invasion of Ukraine, have made it much harder for Russian
corporations in key sectors (including oil and banking) to do business
abroad.
The result is an economy that has been in recession for two years. GDP has declined to roughly the level it was in the immediate wake of the 2008 financial collapse:
The
result, then, is that you have a Russia that is extremely limited — at
least, compared to what it once was. Russia can bully around a weaker
non-NATO state, like Ukraine; it can help prop up an ally against ragtag
rebels, as in Syria. But it cannot challenge the Western-led alliance
for global supremacy in the way the Soviets could.
Putin can’t change this — he can’t rebuild the Russian
military overnight, or solve its fundamental economic weakness relative
to America. That means that accomplishing his ultimate goal of restoring
Russian greatness means he needs to break the American-led alliance —
somehow persuading these countries to abandon institutions like NATO and
take a softer view of Moscow’s overseas meddling.
“Information operations” — like, say, hacking a political
party’s emails and dumping them publicly — is a particularly effective
tool for accomplishing this goal. Putin’s principal rivals are Western
democracies, whose elections can theoretically be swayed by the release
of damaging information. And the United States happened to be holding an
election with a candidate who, at least on paper, seems likely to
destabilize America’s commitment to its allies and cozy up to the
Kremlin.
To analysts like Nexon and Polyakova, the takeaway is
clear: Even though there was a chance the US might retaliate, Russian
leaders likely concluded that intervening to help Trump was worth it.
“Putin is willing to take increasingly bigger risks to
strategically place Russia as a [great] power in the world again,”
Polyakova says. “I think it’s the Kremlin’s attempt to balance the
security asymmetry that currently exists.”
If this analysis is correct, then don’t expect Russia to
stop with the US election. Both France and Germany are holding national
elections in 2017; both of them feature far-right candidates who support
a less hostile stance to Russia than their opponents. If Russia’s
information operation worked in America, there’s no reason to think the
Russians wouldn’t try it with two of their other leading rivals — or,
for that matter, in a future US election.
“If you can divide [Western countries], even in a
half-assed way, that’s good,” Nexon says. “If you can get people elected
who look like they might rip up [institutions like NATO] on their own,
that’s even better.”
Franken,
the second-term Democratic senator from Minnesota and, before that, a
longtime writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live,” has studied
this. He provided commentary
for MSNBC at the Al Smith Dinner, the Catholic charity fund-raiser in
October where presidential nominees engage in good-natured ribbing of
themselves and each other (Trump mostly skipped the “good-natured” part
and was booed). “I wanted to see if Trump laughed,” Franken said. “And he didn’t. He smiled, but didn’t laugh. I don’t know what it is.”
I
went back and watched video of Trump, not just at the Smith dinner. He
is, to say the least, a comic cash cow. No one has provided as much
fodder for the political, media and celebrity axis that Franken has
operated in for over four decades. But Franken is correct. It is
extremely rare to see or hear the president-elect himself laughing.
Franken offered no theory on this, just a contrast. “I happen to laugh
an incredible amount,” he told me. He has a distinctive and rollicking
cackle, which allows his staff to track his whereabouts on the Senate
floor. Conan O’Brien, a longtime friend and fellow “S.N.L.” alumnus,
told me that Franken’s laugh sounded like “a hydraulic seal” whose
rhythmic and almost mechanical force “can clear your sinuses.”
But
these were suddenly unfunny days. A shellshocked aura was cast over
Capitol Hill, particularly among Democrats. I went to see Franken in his
Senate office on a rainy Tuesday as lawmakers were trickling back to
town after Thanksgiving. They convened in caucus meetings and hallway
quorums that became commiseration sessions. Since Nov. 8, Washington has
felt like a fortressed village bracing for a guerrilla invasion.
At
65, Franken retains the thick build of the high-school wrestler he once
was. The resting pout of his mouth — the Baby Huey countenance to match
his honking voice — has assumed more of a smirk. Franken is not good at
masking emotions. He cries easily and can become impatient and never
bothered much to disguise his contempt for adversaries, at least until
he arrived in the Senate, whose hidebound traditions of decorum demanded
at least an honest effort. Franken has been mostly successful at this,
and has been strenuous in his attempts to leave his comic past behind,
though he was once busted for making dismissive faces and hand gestures
behind Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader gave a floor speech in
2010. “This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell said,
admonishing Franken, who later wrote a note of apology.
One
thing that made it safe to laugh was the ridiculousness of the conceit.
People assumed that the normal checks and balances would kick in and
never allow someone like Trump to be elected — the disapproval of the
“establishment,” the outrage capacity of the electorate or even a
candidate’s own code of ethics or ability to be shamed. Back in the
spring of 2015, when few believed that Trump was serious or would mount a
real campaign, comedians reacted to his entry into the race with
ostentatious gratitude: Jon Stewart, whose final six weeks on Comedy
Central coincided with the first stage of the campaign, thanked Trump
for “putting me in some kind of comedy hospice.”
As
Trump bloated into the campaign’s inescapable parade float, his
supposed comic abundance became more of a crisis. Every stopgap failed
in 2015 and 2016. So did every pundit assumption, and even the
long-understood barriers between, say, real and fake news. Where does
comedy even fit when the outrageous becomes the default? By October, the
executive producer of HBO’s “Veep,” David Mandel, was complaining to The Los Angeles Times
that Trump was “ruining comedy.” By December, it was revealed that
Trump would remain the executive producer of “The Celebrity Apprentice,”
and the fusion between reality TV and the sobering reality of the
presidency seemed complete. Political humor has faced similar moments in
the past, but never such a reckoning. “People on ‘S.N.L.’ actually were
saying eight years ago when Sarah Palin was running, We couldn’t have
written this ourselves,” said Robert Smigel, a longtime writer for the
show and friend of Franken’s who is best known as the voice behind the
foul-mouthed puppet Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Franken’s
body of work has been oddly prescient. He was the subject of a 2006
documentary, “God Spoke,” which chronicled his journey to the Senate.
A.O. Scott of The New York Times described it as
“an investigation of the phenomenon of ideological celebrity, with Mr.
Franken as a willing case study.” You could make the case that Trump
himself might represent something of a next-phase case study himself — a
nominally ideological celebrity that has grown into a political
phenomenon.
More
remarkable, Franken wrote a satirical novel called “Why Not Me?” which
details his own fictitious celebrity run for president. His character is
corrupt, clueless and unprepared, but a confluence of unlikely factors —
and Franken’s wildly popular vow to eliminate A.T.M. fees — somehow
propels him to the White House, where things quickly go off the rails.
President Franken loses his mind (punching Nelson Mandela in the stomach
during a meeting!). He is the subject of a special congressional
inquiry — the Joint Committee on the President’s Mood Swings — and is
forced to resign after five months. Franken published “Why Not Me?” in
1999.
Now,
in his Senate office, Franken kept shaking his head. He seemed to be
choosing his words carefully, trying to toe the opposition party line
about Trump, in so much as there is one: “Where there are places we
agree, I will try to work with this administration.” But his despair was
obvious. “He’s very different,” Franken said of Trump. “And that’s as
far as I’ll go in my conjecture of who he is.” He chortled. “That’s
become kind of a cottage industry.” Psychoanalyzing Trump, he meant. I
reminded Franken that he was qualified, having presented himself at the
Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last summer as “a
world-renowned expert on right-wing megalomaniacs.” He had received “a
doctorate in megalomaniac studies from Trump University.” That was a few
days after Trump accepted the Republican nomination, a remarkable
development that — if you listened to the dismissive speeches and
constant mockery across the spectrum of smug progressives and Never
Trump conservatives — still felt at a safe remove.
I
was curious whether Trump’s election would herald a change in Franken’s
approach. He was always fierce in what he describes as “the heaping of
scorn and ridicule,” first on “S.N.L.” and later as a liberal talk-radio
host and author of political commentary with titles like “Rush Limbaugh
Is a Big Fat Idiot (And Other Observations).” He heaped abundant scorn
and ridicule upon George W. Bush but was not in the Senate at the time.
“I think this can be a moment that calls out for Al’s voice,” said Ben
Wikler, the head of the Washington office of MoveOn.org and producer of
Franken’s show on the defunct progressive radio network Air America.
Wikler, who helped Franken write his 2003 book, “Lies and the Lying
Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” said there
is a great need for “fearless opposition fighters that can cut through
the noise.” Franken has established himself as a legislator, he said,
and it might be time for him to return to his insurgent comic roots.
“Part of Al’s earlier approach to public life was swashbuckling and
baiting antagonists into fights they could not win,” Wikler told me.
“Humor can be a way of blasting through fear and anxiety and giving
people backbone.”
I
asked Franken about this. He nodded as if it had occurred to him but
was otherwise noncommital. “We’ll see how he operates,” he said of
Trump. “I don’t think anyone here has ever been a senator with this kind
of person in the White House. This one is very different.” He coughed
out a nervous laugh. “We’ll see how he evolves. And we’ll see how I
evolve.”
You sometimes hear the
expression “famous for Washington.” It describes someone well known
within the staid and dorky confines of the Beltway. Someone like Senator
Orrin Hatch, say, or maybe the election superlawyer Ben Ginsberg. It is
a somewhat backhanded designation, which is not to say Washington does
not love celebrities (to wit, the metastatic growth of the White House
Correspondents’ Association dinner in recent years). Occasionally,
celebrities from other realms cross over into politics. The Hall of Fame
wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, Steve Largent, was in Congress
for a while, as was the guy who played Gopher on “The Love Boat” (Fred
Grandy). Franken followed in this tradition and is unquestionably the
only person ever to both serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee and
play a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Paul Simon of Illinois
— in a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Now
comes probably the best-known celebrity ever to enter American politics
— Trump — who cannonballed in at the highest level. His election made a
case that celebrity itself may today be the most potent driver of
American populism. Franken understands better than most the power of
fame as a way to gain a political audience and scramble ideological
paradigms. “One thing I’ve learned,” Franken told me, “is that celebrity
trumps ideology. I have spent a lot of time over the years heaping
scorn and ridicule upon Republicans. But then you meet them, and a lot
of people are like, Hey, Al, love that satellite mobile-uplink guy” —
one of his signature “S.N.L.” characters,
a “Weekend Update” correspondent from the early 1990s who reported back
to the studio via a “totally self-contained one-man mobile-uplink unit”
(with a 1.3-meter parabolic antenna attached to his head).
Two
weekends before Election Day, Franken went to Philadelphia to appear at
get-out-the-vote events on behalf of Hillary Clinton and local
Democrats. “You all have jobs and kids,” Franken would say to rooms full
of volunteers. “Ignore them.” The rooms would erupt in laughter. “Kids
love being left alone. Eight-year-olds are perfectly capable of
operating microwave ovens.” These are Franken’s stock lines at such
events. They always land. “Thank you for keeping your sense of humor
through all of this,” one volunteer, Liz Martinez, told Franken after he
spoke. Franken cocked his right eyebrow, John Belushi-style. “Who says
I’m keeping my sense of humor?” he said.
Franken
fell asleep at 2 a.m. on the night of the election and woke up with a
migraine. For days, it was hard to think about anything besides Trump in
the White House. “There was a week or so when sleeping literally was a
great thing,” Franken said. “You go through a process of internalizing
it.” In addition to the political shock, there was a broader despair
over the cultural disconnect that the election laid bare. I kept
thinking of an Onion headline that ran a few weeks after the Sept. 11
attacks: “A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid [Expletive]
Again.” How long does it take a culture to forge a new sensibility,
whether comedic or political? Franken seemed to be struggling with this a
bit. There was similar confusion in the various liberal bubbles of
Washington, New York and Hollywood, whose inhabitants were the supposed
keepers of the American zeitgeist — the geniuses who so spectacularly
dismissed the zeitgeist that elected Donald Trump.
“I
really believe nobody knows anything right now,” Conan O’Brien told me
over the phone from Los Angeles. O’Brien is among the less political TV
comedians, particularly on cable (his show has run since 2010 on TBS).
But Trump is an inescapable topic. “I really think the whole mantra that
everyone must have, not just in this medium but in the world in
general, is that no one knows anything.” O’Brien recalled that after
Sept. 11, people were declaring the death of irony. It was not. There
was like a three-week pause. But then irony regenerated itself in some
altered, post-Sept. 11 form. Trump’s victory has landed a blow to the
country’s notions of certainty. “I would say we’re not seeing the death
of certainty,” O’Brien said. “But certainty has taken a holiday right
now.” Plenty of certainty, now discarded, was generated in 2016. Our
cozy silos of belief and customized group assumptions gave us our most
brutal campaign in years. “Everyone has their own street corner,”
O’Brien said.
While
“Saturday Night Live” was always subversive and groundbreaking, it was
also conceived before cable and the internet rewarded niche
sensibilities. As a network show, it needed to reach a critical mass of
the American middle. “We’ve actually tried to make ‘S.N.L.’ a safe space
across the political spectrum,” Lorne Michaels, its creator, told me in
his office near the “S.N.L.” studio on the 17th floor of 30 Rockefeller
Plaza. It has never been a production that preaches to a choir, as
contrasted with cable comedy shows hosted by the left-leaning likes of
Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee and John Oliver. “Jon Stewart was giving voice
to visions and ideas and doing it brilliantly, but in a way that almost
everyone watching agreed with,” Michaels said with a bit of an edge.
“It was 100 percent pure.”
The
election was still a few weeks away, and our discussion — like most
discussions during that stretch of ancient history — was predicated on
the assumption that Clinton would win. Michaels caught some heat for
inviting Trump to host the show in October 2015; critics accused him of
helping to celebrate and “normalize” someone they viewed as a monster.
But the fact that Trump would eventually wage a Twitter assault against
“S.N.L.” — particularly over Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him as a
menacing, bumbling imbecile — would itself suggest that the show struck
the right balance. “Trump is the head writer of this whole thing,”
Baldwin told me. “They could come up with something for us to do every
week.” Baldwin, who said he had no Trump impersonation until he debuted
the character on “S.N.L.” on Oct. 1,
said he takes no special satisfaction in angering the president-elect,
whom he calls “the first modern-day president who does not have thick
skin.” He said that he, too, has been blamed by some people for making
Trump appear more palatable than he is. “It’s kind of a Rorschach test,”
Baldwin said, “for how people see the political world in general.”
Clinton’s cameo,
playing Val the bartender consoling the distraught Kate McKinnon
version of her, was arguably her most endearing moment in an otherwise
dreary slog. By the time of the Trump and Clinton debates, the lines
between parody and self-parody had blurred to a grainy haze; it was
difficult to watch the candidates for two seconds without my mind
jumping immediately to Baldwin and McKinnon.
Franken, who joined
“S.N.L.” at its inception in 1975, never achieved the star status of
the show’s first wave — John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and
Chevy Chase. “Al was relentless about being a performer,” Michaels said.
Franken’s best-known creation at “S.N.L.” was probably Stuart Smalley,
the mirror-staring host of the mock self-help show “Daily Affirmation
With Stuart Smalley.” Smalley, who was also the subject of a movie, was
inspired by Franken’s experience going through a 12-step recovery
program with his wife, Franni, who battled alcoholism. “I was trying to
explain recovery though a character,” Franken said. “He is a character
that, at first blush, looks like kind of an idiot, but actually a lot of
the stuff he’s trying to talk about is true.” There is, Franken said, a
larger lesson embedded here. “I’m trying to express that you can learn
things from people who you think aren’t smarter than you,” he said. “I’m
embarrassed by how late in life I learned that.”
Franken
left “Saturday Night Live” in 1995 and settled into a successful next
act as a liberal satirist, author and radio host. He had no plan to seek
any office. But then his friend and political idol, Senator Paul
Wellstone of Minnesota, was killed in a plane crash along with seven
others — including his wife and daughter — on the eve of his re-election
campaign in 2002. “It was just this shattering thing,” said Norman
Ornstein, an author and congressional scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute and a close friend of Franken’s who grew up in the same
hometown, St. Louis Park, Minn.
The
Republican candidate, Norm Coleman, wound up defeating Walter Mondale,
who replaced Wellstone on the ballot. Franken started thinking about
running against Coleman, especially after Coleman said in an interview
with Roll Call after a few months in office that he was a “99 percent
improvement over Paul Wellstone.”
Franken
knew that running for Senate would uproot his life. Not only would he
have to move back to Minnesota, but he would have to work brutally hard.
“This was not someone who saw this as, Oh, I’ve been an entertainer,
and now as a dilettante I’m going to run for office,” Ornstein said.
Franken wound up defeating Coleman by 312 votes after months of recounts
and court challenges. When he joined the Senate in 2009, Franken was
determined to shed any hint that he was anything but a humble newcomer.
He resisted national news coverage and tried for the most part to
subvert his funnyman impulses to the solemn duties of his new role.
O’Brien
said it was strange to watch Franken, such an instinctively funny
person, “choose not to use one of his superpowers.” It took getting used
to. “We had some serious conversations,” O’Brien said. “But clearly he
was witnessing, every day in the Senate and in the government, the most
absurd things. And he would have to control himself.” O’Brien said
Franken told him that one of his aides gave him some advice early on:
“Whenever you have an instinct to do something, just don’t do that.”
Franken’s
rejection of type became his defining characteristic, at least in the
Washington shorthand. The news media dutifully ground his determined
seriousness into a cliché. Every publication that wrote about Franken
seemed compelled to deploy some version of “No Joke” in its headlines.
He keeps a framed collage in his office made up of a couple of dozen
such examples (including a “Franken’s Campaign Against Comcast Is No Joke” headline from The New York Times).
Still,
colleagues from both parties would seek Franken’s help in workshopping
jokes for their speeches. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Franken’s close friend
and fellow Democrat from Minnesota, was preparing a comedy act at the
expense of Senator Ted Cruz for Washington’s annual Gridiron Dinner in
2013. This was around the time a Carnival Cruise ship ran aground in the
Gulf of Mexico amid a four-day accumulation of human waste. That
debacle inspired the following: In Washington, Klobuchar said, “when
Democrats hear about a difficult cruise, we don’t know if it’s Carnival
or Ted.” That was funny, kind of. Klobuchar ran the joke by Cruz
beforehand on the Senate floor as a matter of collegial courtesy.
Franken approached the pair and asked Klobuchar to repeat the joke,
which she did. “Without missing a beat,” Klobuchar recalled, Franken
offered this improvement: In Washington, went the Franken version, “when
you hear about a cruise that’s full of [expletive], you don’t know if
it’s Carnival or Ted.” That was funnier, Klobuchar conceded, though she
opted for the tamer original.
Franken
won re-election by more than 10 percentage points in 2014, a year in
which several Democratic incumbents were defeated. He said he has felt
more freedom in the Senate since his re-election. “I think the people of
Minnesota get that I came here to be their senator and do the work and
legislate,” he told me. I asked Franken, a longtime New Yorker until he
moved back to Minnesota to run for Senate, whether he had met Donald
Trump. They were in the same room on many occasions, in the way that
famous New Yorkers often are. But their only interaction came at a
screening of “The Sopranos” at Radio City Music Hall. Franken recognized
Trump in front of him and was moved to yell out, “THAT IS THE WORST
COMBOVER I HAVE EVER SEEN!” Trump spun around and saw it was Franken. He
didn’t say anything, Franken said, but “sort of gave that look that
said, Oh, that’s a comedian, O.K., I get it.” I asked Franken if he
would have done the same if he were in elected office at the time.
“Probably not,” he admitted.
Franken
is fully aware that even the most thrown-off or nominally irreverent
quip can become toxic after being put through what Franken calls the
“de-humorizer” of partisan America. I witnessed this firsthand, and even
participated, when I joined Franken in late August at the Minnesota
State Fair in St. Paul. As Franken made his rounds — pouring glasses of
milk at a dairy stand, eating a pork chop on a stick — he paused for a
minute to receive a distraught call from his son, Joe. Joe relayed the
news that Teddy Bridgewater, the young quarterback for the Minnesota
Vikings, had just suffered a gruesome injury to his knee at practice
that afternoon. “No!” said Franken, a lifelong Vikings fan. “This is so
depressing,” he muttered after hanging up. “It’s like finding out
Hillary’s having an affair with Anthony Weiner.”
Franken
blurted this out with such matter-of-fact exasperation, which I
happened to find hilarious. Later, I did something I probably should not
have and shared Franken’s quip via Twitter, itself a kind of
de-humorizer. This spelled trouble for the home-team senator. Audience
reaction ran heavily against the remark, especially from Vikings fans
(there are a few of these in Minnesota) and Franken nonfans
(“Frankenstein is a liberal pinhead”). Franken wasted little time
grabbing the cleanup mop. “Pretty insensitive and stupid of me,” he
tweeted. “Regret it and sincerely apologize.”
The day before
the presidential election, Trump dropped in for a quick rally in a
hangar at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He railed against
the “disaster taking place in Minnesota,” with “large numbers of Somali
refugees coming into your state, without your knowledge, without your
support or approval.” He drew raucous applause and came within just 1.5
points of beating Clinton in the historically blue state. “You’ve
suffered enough in Minnesota,” Trump said.
Franken
was furious about Trump’s remarks. He had worked closely with the
Somali communities of Minnesota and had made many friendships. A young
Somali-American woman, Muna Abdulahi, whose family immigrated to
Minnesota, went to work as a page in Franken’s office. He wound up
speaking at her high school graduation in Willmar, Minn., last spring
and ran into her on Election Day on the campus of the University of
Minnesota, where she is now a freshman. She told him that her younger
sister, Anisa, had just been named homecoming queen back in Willmar.
In
the weeks after Trump was elected, Franken was asked to speak at a
middle school in St. Paul that has a big population of Somali students.
The students were terrified about the election. Tensions had run high
after a September incident in St. Cloud in which a knife-wielding Somali
man wounded 10 people in an attack at a mall (an off-duty police
officer shot and killed him). A spate of harassment targeting Somalis
ensued. “So I went to the school, and I talked to the kids,” Franken
told me, “and I said: You’re Americans. You’re Americans.” Franken told
me about a conversation he had in his office on Nov. 17 with a French
diplomat. Franken asked the diplomat who could be considered a
“Frenchman” in France. The diplomat explained that the designation was
usually reserved for someone whose family went back a few hundred years
in the same village. In other words, new arrivals are not “Frenchmen.”
“But
in the United States, we make them homecoming queen,” Franken said with
a catch of emotion. “Goddamn, it made me mad,” he said again, referring
to Trump’s airport rally. “It’s literally sad, you know, that kind of
thing.”
Before
he entered the Senate, Franken was always more of satirist than a Henny
Youngman jokester type. “You take a reality, and you exaggerate, and
you show how ridiculous it is,” Ornstein told me. Take, for example,
this scenario — a celebrity runs for president and does a bunch of
bizarre and seemingly beyond-the-pale stuff, like boasting about the
size of his penis on the debate stage, and winds up in the White House.
“You look at a situation, you analyze it, and you see the weak points
where you make something funny out of it,” Ornstein said. But what if no
one notices the difference between the fact and the fiction, much less
cares to recognize the absurdity of the details? What’s the use of
satire, or straight-out ridicule, if your target can’t even be bothered
to care?
“There
are a lot of ironies in this election,” Franken said, folding himself
into a crooked angle on his office couch. Franken kept pointing out
ironies. There are different kinds of ironies. There are funny ones,
like what you read in The Onion, or cruel ones that leave you
bewildered. These seemed more like the cruel ones. He mentioned Trump’s
unsubstantiated claim that he saw thousands of Muslims somewhere in New
Jersey cheering after the Sept. 11 attacks and his contention that the
Clintons were behind the Obama “birther” conspiracy. “He’d say several
things a day that would end anyone else’s race,” Franken said. The day
before, the president-elect had tweeted with no evidence that millions
of fraudulent votes were cast against him.
After
the election, the Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” as its word of
the year for 2016 (defining it as a state “in which objective facts are
less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and
personal belief”). “The big irony is that I made some of my living by
writing books about people who lied,” Franken told me, naming Limbaugh,
Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and others. “It just seems adorable now that
I could make a living doing that, fighting misstatements of fact. And
people were like, Oh, that’s terrible, I can’t believe it. And now it
just doesn’t matter.” He laughed, as Franken does, but with no sign of
joy. This felt too visceral to be called humor, as if we were moving on
to something else entirely.
Mark Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for the magazine and the author of “This Town.” He last wrote about Reince Priebus in his new role as Donald Trump’s chief of staff.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week.
A version of this article appears in print on December 18, 2016, on page MM50 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Funny or Die.
Christmas with Mr. Tigerli
Copyright 2015/2016 by Letizia Mancino
translated by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
Christmas with Mr. Tigerli
Copyright 2015/2016 by Letizia Mancino
translated by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
He
is in Maine, Betty!
B:
What on earth is Mr. Tigerli doing in Maine?
He
is spending Christmas in the “The Jackson Laboratory” in Bar Harbor.
B:
Isn’t it too cold for him there?
He
has his winter coat and a wooly hat! It is not much colder in Maine than on
Olympus!
B:
Is he alone?
Yes,
and he hasn’t taken his motorbike.
B:
And the beautiful Greek girl?
She
doesn’t celebrate Christmas. A Greek goddess isn’t a Christian.
B:
I have already heard something of this world famous Institute on Mount Desert Island!
Yes
Betty! It’s a cats’ paradise. There are six million mice there. More than anywhere
else in the world!
B:
Six million! Oh my god, and all sitting around under the Christmas tree?
Yes,
they are all related to each other!
B:
And they are waiting for the Christmas presents to be handed out?
Yes.
B:
Oh god, and they all want to have their Christmas dinner at the same table?
Yes.
B:
How many tons of cheese would one need for such an enormous family?
Mr.
Tigerli will invite them all to dinner.
B:
Rockefeller could not be more generous.
Neither
could Pope Franciscus.
B:
Aren’t the mice afraid of our cat?
He
has disguised himself as the Christmas tree.
B:
That would certainly suit him well!
As
a Christmas present he will let all the six million mice free. The mice will be
absolutely overjoyed.
B:
Has our little friend already drunk too much mulled wine?
Happy,
happy, cats and mice
Christmas
together is very nice.
Mr. Tigerli in China
Copyright 2016 by Letizia Mancino
translation by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
Yes Betty, either or it seems he wanted to fly only with
Singapore Airways.
Boeing or Airbus, it’s just the same
isn’t it? Aren’t they both just fat birds with 500 passengers?
Yes, but Singapore Airlines has the
most beautiful airhostesses: delicate, fine, graceful… Mr. Tigerli had looked forward to the flight
so much!
So the little man was disappointed?
You just can’t imagine how disappointed
he was.
But thank God one of the hostesses was a
pretty Chinese girl. Mr. Tigerli purred loudly but she didn’t hear him because
the purring of the Airbus 380 was even louder.
The poor cat!
You’ve said it Betty. Mr. Tigerli was
in a very bad mood and asked me for a loud speaker.
I’m sure you can get one in 1st
Class.
“”Russian Girl” had even heard you over
the roar of the Niagara Falls” I said to Mr. Tigerli. “You are a very
unfaithful cat. You wanted to get to know Asiatic girls. That’s how it is when
one leaves one’s first love”.
And what did he say to that?
“Men are hunters” was his answer.
Yes, my dear cat, a mouse hunter. And
what else did he say?
Not another word. He behaved as if he
hadn’t heard me.
The Airbus is very loud.
I told him shortly “Don’t trouble
yourself about “Chinese Girl”. There will be enough even prettier girls in
China. Wait till we land in Guilin”.
Did he understand you?
Naturally Mr. Tigerli understood me
immediately. Yes, sweetheart, don’t worry. They will find you something sweet
to eat.
And he?
He was so happy.
No problem going through the immigration
control?
Naturally! Lots of problems. How could I explain to
customs that the cat had come as a tourist to China to buy shoes?
Fur in exchange for shoes…
Don’t be so cynical Betty!
Cat meat in exchange for shoes?
He came through the pass control with
no trouble!
Is this Mr. Tigerli?
 |
Betty MacDonald's Vashon Island is a paradise.
info to: Sandra Lorinda Traci Petr Dana Jana Michaela Rebekah Swiss Charrd Tru John Darsie Darsie Toby Jeanine Carol Justin Lila Daniel Mo Nika Steve Neal Jitka Jitka Tami Pete Laurie Maia Nancy Kelly Pam Mary Jan and all our other friends
www.bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/
info to: Sandra Lorinda Traci Petr Dana Jana Michaela Rebekah Swiss Charrd Tru John Darsie Darsie Toby Jeanine Carol Justin Lila Daniel Mo Nika Steve Neal Jitka Jitka Tami Pete Laurie Maia Nancy Kelly Pam Mary Jan and all our other friends
www.bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/
Take an illustrated day trip through Washington state’s largest city with artist Candace Rose Rardon.
gadventures.com
Linda White yes,if my health allows.I have a few problems but is something I have always wanted to do,especially as I reread her books.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · August 1 at 6:37pm
Linde Lund Dear Linda I'll keep you posted.
Like · Reply · 1 · August 1 at 6:42pm
Bella Dillon · Friends with Darsie Beck
I still read Mrs Piggle Wiggle books to this day. I love her farm on vashon.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · August 1 at 10:32pm
Lila Taylor Good morning...Linde Lund
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 18 hrs
