1. Nicholas Kristof: We’re Journalists, Mr. Trump, Not the Enemy

Look, we in journalism deserve to have our feet held to the fire. We make mistakes all the time, and too often we are superficial, sensationalist, unfair, defensive or diverted by shiny objects. Critics are right that we in the national media are often out of touch with working-class America, and distressingly often, we are lap dogs instead of watchdogs.

Yet for all our failings, journalism remains an indispensable constraint on power. Trump has systematically tried to delegitimize the institutions that hold him accountable — courts, prosecutors, investigators, the media — and that’s the context for his vilification of all them, for we collectively provide monitoring that outrages him.

May I humbly suggest that when a megalomaniacal leader howls and shrieks at critics, that is when institutional checks on that leader become a bulwark of democracy. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/trump-journalists-enemy.html

2. Jonathan Chait: The Obama-Era Deficit Scolds Want Big Tax Cuts Now

One of the unnoticed ways in which American politics has changed under Donald Trump is the quiet disappearance of the budget deficit as a fixation of the news media and the business and political elite. During Barack Obama’s two terms in office, terror about deficits positively consumed the discourse. A terror of doubt inspired an endless stream of presidential debate questions (none of which bothered with climate change), bipartisan commissions, supercommissions, panels, and op-eds. The concern transcended partisanship — indeed, it usually manifested itself as a concern about partisanship, expressed as the hope that the two parties could work together, the purpose of which was assumed axiomatically to be the prevention of fiscal calamity. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/the-obama-era-deficit-scolds-all-want-big-tax-cuts-now.html

3. Paul Waldman: Trump's losing war against reality

You may have heard a lot about the difference between Teleprompter Trump and Extemporaneous Trump: The first is presidential, responsible, and even inclusive, while the second is angry, impulsive, and inflammatory. The first is who we see when President Trump's aides have prevailed upon him to lower the temperature of a controversy or say the right thing, while the second is who we see a day or two later, the real representation of what Trump believes.

All that's true. But it's also important to look closely at what Extemporaneous Trump says, beyond the "25 crazy things the president said at yesterday's rally." When you do, you see that his primary goal when he's expressing his true feelings by talking off the cuff is to create an alternate reality — and he's livid that it's not working.

Teleprompter Trump actually makes substantive arguments about issues. You may find them shallow or misleading (they often are), but at least the aides who write the words are attempting to make a case for the things the administration is doing or wants to do. But when Trump is unscripted, he can't be bothered. When he addresses something substantive, his case seldom goes much deeper than, "Oh, it's terrible" (for something he wants to change) or "Oh, it's gonna be so great" (for something he's proposing).

The things people supposedly say are a force against which Trump must constantly fight, as well as evidence that there exists an imaginary conventional wisdom he is constantly proving wrong. "Remember, everybody said you won't bring [GDP growth] up to 1 percent," he said in Phoenix. "You won't bring it up to 1.2 percent."

No one said that, because GDP growth is almost always over 1 percent unless we're in an actual recession or a temporary downturn, and it was 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 before Trump took office. But every Trump achievement is accompanied by an insistence that everyone said it was impossible to do something as fantastic as he has done. 8/24/17 http://theweek.com/articles/720133/trumps-losing-war-against-reali

4. Arizona Republic Editorial: Racism Is Not Just OK With Him. It Is a Goal

After Trump was elected, many hoped he would abandon his habit of appealing to the worst instincts of disaffected white Americans who have been left behind by economic changes that had little to do with undocumented immigration.

Many hoped Trump would decide to become the president of all the people.

But Trump spent last week demonstrating that he wants to be president of the few.

By pardoning Arpaio, Trump made it clear that institutional racism is not just OK with him. It is a goal.

That should trouble every American who believes that our duty as a nation is to continue working on behalf of equal justice. August 26, 2017 http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2017/08/25/donald-trump-resurrects-joe-arpaio-irrelevance/604067001/

5. Jonathan Chait: ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ Becomes ‘It’s Not My Fault’

Trump inexplicably believes he can save his own political standing by detaching himself from the majority party in Congress. One White House adviser tells the Washington Post that, if Republicans lose control of the House, Trump will be able to say, “See, I told you these guys wouldn’t get anything done. I’ve been saying this for months. They’re not following my agenda.”

It might make sense for Trump to chart an independent course if he were forging partnerships with Democrats. But cutting himself off from his party as a blame-shifting exercise is utter political madness. It simply encourages a vicious cycle in which Republicans in Congress have less reason to take unpopular votes on behalf of Trump’s agenda, Trump lashes out at them more, and Republican voters act on his dismay by refusing to come out to vote for their congressional races.

To the (very limited) extent Trump had a successful positive message in 2016 — and did not merely rely on tarnishing his opponent — he appealed to low-information voters as a deal-making virtuoso. They didn’t understand the complexity of passing legislation through a fragmented system with multiple veto points, and believed Trump was some close approximation of the character he played on The Apprentice, who could overpower the mysterious gridlock in Washington. Trump boasted over and over that he was a dealmaker, deals are what he does, and his negotiating prowess would overcome any barrier. He may well have believed this himself. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/i-alone-can-fix-it-becomes-its-not-my-fault.html

6. Dan Balz: Trump’s pardon of Arpaio fits a pattern: A divider, not a uniter

Trump has set his presidency on an unambiguous course for which there could be no reversal. He has chosen to be a divider, not a uniter, no matter how many words to the contrary he reads off a teleprompter or from a prepared script. That’s one obvious message from Friday’s decision to issue a pardon for controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Trump has been a divisive force from the very start of his campaign for president, a proud disrupter of the political status quo. His swashbuckling contempt for political correctness and the rules of the game endeared him to millions of Americans who were fed up with Washington, with career politicians, with liberal elites and with the mainstream media. The more he is under fire — as he is now — the more he returns to that strategy.

Ever since his election, Trump has had the opportunity to try to expand his coalition, to reach beyond his base and to increase the size of his governing constituency. His electoral margin was comfortable enough, but three of the states that tipped the balance — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — were decided by less than a percentage point, and he lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton. That’s a fragile basis from which to govern.

Given those realities, a prudent politician presumably would seek ways to draw more voters into his or her orbit. Trump consistently has done the opposite, with actions designed to bind himself ever more tightly to the constituency that elected him at the cost of permanently losing potential supporters. The Arpaio pardon fits that pattern in bold colors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-pardon-of-arpaio-fits-a-pattern-a-divider-not-a-uniter/2017/08/26/e28e0616-8a5e-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html

7. Matt Taibbi: The Media Created a World Dumb Enough for Trump

For more than two years now, it's been obvious that Donald Trump is a disaster on almost every level except one – he's great for the media business. Most of us who do this work have already gone through the process of working out just how guilty we should or should not feel about this.

Many execs and editors – and Maddox seems to fall into this category – have convinced themselves that the ratings and the money are a kind of cosmic reward for covering Trump responsibly. But deep down, most of us know that's a lie. Donald Trump gets awesome ratings for the same reason Fear Factor made money feeding people rat-hair tortilla chips: nothing sells like a freak show. If a meteor crashes into jello night at the Playboy mansion, it doesn't matter if you send Edward R. Murrow to do the standup. Some things sell themselves.

The Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed. It's Battle of the Network Stars meets Wrestlemania meets Survivor meets the Kursk disaster. It's got the immediacy of a breaking news crash, with themes of impending doom, conflict, celebrity meltdown, anger, racism, gender war, everything.

Trump's monstrousness is ironic, since the image of Trump as the media's very own Frankenstein's monster has been used and re-used in the last years. Many in the business are of the opinion that, having created Trump and let him loose in the village, we in the press now have a responsibility to hunt him down with aggressive investigative reporting, to make the world safe again.

That might indeed be a good idea. But that take also implies that slaying the monster will fix the problem. Are we sure that's true? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-blame-media-for-creating-world-dumb-enough-for-trump-w499649

8. Joe Biden: We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.

The giant forward steps we have taken in recent years on civil liberties and civil rights and human rights are being met by a ferocious pushback from the oldest and darkest forces in America. Are we really surprised they rose up? Are we really surprised they lashed back? Did we really think they would be extinguished with a whimper rather than a fight?

Did we think the charlatans and the con-men and the false prophets who have long dotted our history wouldn’t revisit us, once again prop up the immigrant as the source of all our troubles, and look to prey on the hopelessness and despair that has grown up in the hollowed-out cities and towns of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and the long-forgotten rural stretches of West Virginia and Kentucky?

We have fought this battle before—but today we have a special challenge.

Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.

We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support.

This is a moment for this nation to declare what the president can’t with any clarity, consistency, or conviction: There is no place for these hate groups in America. Hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants—all who are seen as “the other”—won’t be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/joe-biden-after-charlottesville/538128/

9. Nicholas Kristof: There Once Was a Great Nation With an Unstable Leader

What happens when the people of a great nation gradually realize that their leader may not be, er, quite right in the head?

When Caligula became Roman emperor in A.D. 37, the people rejoiced. “On all sides, you could see nothing but altars and sacrifices, men and women decked in their holiday best and smiling,” according to the first-century writer Philo.

The Senate embraced him, and he was hailed as a breath of fresh air after the dourness, absenteeism and miserliness of his great-uncle, Emperor Tiberius. Caligula was colorful and flamboyant, offering plenty of opportunities for ribald gossip. Caligula had four wives in rapid succession, and he was said to be sleeping with his sister. (Roman historians despised him, so some of the gossip should be treated skeptically.)

He was charming, impetuous and energetic, sleeping only three hours a night, and he displayed a common touch as he constantly engaged with the public. His early months as emperor brimmed with hope. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/caligula-roman-empire.html

10. Doyle McManus: Trump is shedding supporters like no other president in modern history

Trump’s poll numbers are bad and getting worse. He began his presidency on shaky ground; on Inauguration Day, only about 45% of Americans said they approved of the job he was doing. Since then, it’s been a bumpy ride downhill. Last week, the Gallup Poll reported that Trump’s job approval had sagged to a low of 34%.

Other surveys’ findings are slightly less dire, but all show the same downward trend. No president has fallen so low in public esteem so early in his tenure in the history of modern polling.

Those aren’t the only daunting numbers Trump has had to contemplate. (He claims he ignores the polls, but often betrays his denials with complaints about specific surveys.) The president’s disapproval rating, the share of Americans who think he’s doing a bad job, rose above 50% faster than any of his predecessors’.

He has created, almost single-handed, an unusually passionate opposition: One poll found that almost twice as many voters “strongly disapproved” of his job performance as said they “strongly approved.”

And while Trump claims that his base of support remains impregnable, that’s proven to be a myth.

“The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before,” the president claimed on Twitter this month. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-trump-polls-20170827-story.html

11. Paul Krugman: Fascism, American Style

Standing up for white people who keep brown people down pleases Trump’s base, whom he’s going to need more than ever as the scandals creep closer and the big policy wins he promised keep not happening.

But the Trump base of angry white voters is a distinct minority in the country as a whole. Furthermore, those voters have always been there. Fifteen years ago, writing about the radicalization of the G.O.P., I suggested the hard core of angry voters was around 20 percent of the electorate; that still seems like a reasonable guess.

What makes it possible for someone like Trump to attain power and hold it is the acquiescence of people, both voters and politicians, who aren’t white supremacists, who sort-of kind-of believe in the rule of law, but are willing to go along with racists and lawbreakers if it seems to serve their interests. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/fascism-arpaio-pardon-trump.html

12. Jane Chong: The Arpaio Pardon Dangerously Accelerates Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law

Like his first executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, which was reportedly rolled out without the rigorous review normally conducted by the Justice Department, Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is an express repudiation of the many systems that exist to appropriately and lawfully channel the President’s power. Their destruction will be costly not only to the rule of law but to the President’s place in the constitutional firmament, as it may well prompt the courts and Congress, in the long run, to cast a skeptical eye on the deference long enjoyed by the President when it comes to core executive functions like enforcement of the law. The vastness of the President’s power does not protect Trump from being impeached for abuses like the Arpaio pardon. Instead, it is a testament to the opposite proposition, and his willingness to use that power as he pleases will not strengthen the executive branch; it will diminish it.

Since the start of the Trump Presidency, commentators have fallen back repeatedly on technical questions of legality to decide how seriously to take Trump’s extraordinary rejection of the most basic norms of public office. But his threatened, and now actual, abuse of the pardon power underscores the flaws of this approach. The Arpaio pardon is a constitutional milepost not because it provides us with any new evidence of Trump’s personal willingness to abuse Presidential power. Instead, it is a dangerous warning sign that neatly captures the many facets of Trump’s ongoing war on the apparatus designed to insure our government is one of laws—an apparatus that begins, and, in the case of a pardon, ends with the President. August 27, 2017 https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-arpaio-pardon-dangerously-accelerates-trumps-assault-on-the-rule-of-law

13. Eric Holthaus: Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

While Harvey’s rains are unique in U.S. history, heavy rainstorms are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide. One recent study showed that by mid-century, up to 450 million people worldwide will be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency. This isn’t just a Houston problem. This is happening all over.

A warmer atmosphere enhances evaporation rates and increases the carrying capacity of rainstorms. Harvey drew its energy from a warmer-than-usual Gulf of Mexico, which will only grow warmer in the decades to come. At its peak, on Saturday night, Harvey produced rainfall rates exceeding six inches per hour in Houston, and its multiday rainfall total is close to the theoretical maximumexpected for anywhere in the United States.

The symbolism of the worst flooding disaster in U.S. history hitting the sprawled-out capital city of America’s oil industry is likely not lost on many. Institutionalized climate denial in our political system and climate denial by inaction by the rest of us have real consequences. They look like Houston.

Once Harvey’s floodwaters recede, the process will begin to imagine a New Houston, and that city will inevitably endure future mega-rainstorms as the world warms. The rebuilding process provides an opportunity to chart a new path. The choice isn’t between left and right, or denier and believer. The choice is between success and failure. August 28, 2017 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547

14. Amanda Marcotte: Operation “Obama Eclipse”: Trump tweet confirms his singleminded obsession with that other president

One of the most frustrating aspects of punditry, circa 2017, is how everyone involved has become the Donald Trump Whisperer, endlessly trying to plumb the depths of the imperious orange monstrosity’s mind. Psychoanalysis of politicians is a waste of time for those of us unblessed with telepathy in ordinary circumstances. With Trump, it’s a particularly useless way to wile away our short hours on this planet. The man’s mind is only an inch deep. There are dog breeds with more complex and nuanced thought processes. Trump is a blustering bully and a racist, and there really isn’t much more to the man.

For those who wonder why such a selfish, intellectually constrained individual would want to run for president, well, he just told you: He was angry that a black man, one who is superior to him in both morality and intelligence, got a job that had previously only been held by white men. It made him so angry, in fact, that Trump completely rearranged his entire soft, easy life in a pitiful effort to erase that fact.

Trump’s racist obsession with delegitimizing Obama has now lasted longer than at least one of his marriages. In 2011, he started flogging the “birther” conspiracy theory, using his status as a reality TV show star to inject insinuations into the mainstream media that Obama was not a native-born American. A month after Trump started pushing this idea, which is rooted in the racist refusal to accept black Americans as full citizens, Obama released his long-form birth certificate. This didn’t slow Trump down, however, because birtherism was never about facts. It was just an excuse to push the narrative that is dear to Trump’s heart: A black president cannot, by definition, be a real president.

Now he’s in the White House, but Trump’s obsession with un-making Obama’s presidency hasn’t let up one bit. Earlier this month, Alberto Nardelli of BuzzFeed reported that European diplomats understand Trump’s hatred of Obama as the central organizing feature, and perhaps the only relevant aspect, of his foreign policy decision-making.

“It’s his only real position,” one of the diplomats told BuzzFeed. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.” http://www.salon.com/2017/08/25/operation-obama-eclipse-trump-tweet-confirms-his-singleminded-obsession-with-that-other-president/

15. Max Boot: 'Sheriff Joe' and Donald Trump are emblems of racism and lawlessness

Coming from anybody but Donald Trump, the pardon issued to rogue cop Joe Arpaio would be shocking. The former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix, was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order not to arrest Latinos solely because he suspected them of being in the country illegally.

Arpaio has also been accused of a horrifying litany of other misconduct. He housed inmates in such inhumane conditions — an outdoor tent city that was an inferno in the summer and a freezer in the winter — that he himself described it as a concentration camp. He overlooked routine brutality by his deputies, which led to legal settlements costing taxpayers at least $140 million. He arrested the owners of a newspaper, the Phoenix New Times, which ran critical coverage of him, leading to a $3.75-million settlement. He was so busy pursuing immigrants that he neglected to investigate cases of rape and child abuse.

Yet President Trump has had nothing but praise for “Sheriff Joe,” who joined him in a racist, crackpot attempt to prove that President Obama had forged his birth certificate. The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump asked Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to drop the criminal case against Arpaio but the attorney general would not agree to obstruct justice. Trump went ahead and pardoned Sheriff Joe.

Arpaio lost his reelection campaign in fall 2016, but he now has the satisfaction of watching a kindred spirit rule the entire country. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-arpaio-pardon-20170827-story.html