1. Charles M. Blow: The Rot You Smell Is a Racist Potus

It seems maddeningly repetitive to have to return time and again to the fact that Donald Trump is a racist, but it must be done. It must be done because it is a foundational character issue, one that supersedes and informs many others, in much the same way that his sexism and xenophobia do.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Representative Elijah Cummings’s district “is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” a “very dangerous & filthy place” and “No human being would want to live there.” Cummings is black, as are most people in his district.

This talk of infestation is telling, because he only seems to apply it to issues concerning black and brown people. He has sniped about the “Ebola infested areas of Africa.” He has called Congressman John Lewis’s Atlanta district “crime infested” as well as telling him to focus on “the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S.” He has called sanctuary cities a “crime infested & breeding concept.” He has talked about how “illegal immigrants” will “pour into and infest our Country.” He has called the presence of the MS-13 gang members “in certain parts of our country” an “infestation.”

None of this is about crime as a discrete phenomenon, but rather about inextricably linking criminality to blackness. White supremacy isn’t necessarily about rendering white people as superhuman; it is just as often about rendering nonwhite people as subhuman. Either way the hierarchy is established, with whiteness assuming the superior position.

Trump is a racist. Say that out loud. Say it with the profundity that it deserves. That to me is the beginning and the ending of the rationale I need to stand steadfast in my resistance. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/opinion/trump-racist-baltimore.html

2. Jonathan Capehart: In Trump’s America, the ‘basket of deplorables’ is overflowing

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up,” Hillary Clinton said at a New York fundraiser in September 2016. More than two years and countless bigoted episodes into the Trump presidency with nary a moment of accountability for them, it turns out Clinton was wrong: It’s more than half. And if you don’t think it is, if you think I’m being overly harsh or painting with too broad a brush, if you are a Republican who has stood up publicly and consistently against the hate and division coming from Trump and his administration, then I eagerly await your receipts. If you have none, this is your time to speak out. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/28/trumps-america-basket-deplorables-is-overflowing/

3. Philip Bump: Robert Mueller kneecaps President Trump’s no collusion, no obstruction mantra

“Director Mueller,” Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler asked, “the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him, but that is not what your report said, is it?”

“Correct,” Mueller replied. “That is not what the report said.”

Nadler quoted from a section of the report in which Mueller’s team wrote that it would have exonerated Trump on the question of obstruction if it could. But, the report says, it couldn’t.

“So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice, is that correct?” Nadler asked.

“That is correct,” Mueller replied.

“And what about total exoneration? Did you totally exonerate the president?” Nadler continued.

“No,” Mueller said.

“Does your report state there is sufficient factual and legal basis for further investigation of potential obstruction of justice by the president?” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) later asked.

“Yes,” Mueller replied.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/24/robert-mueller-kneecaps-president-trumps-no-collusion-no-obstruction-mantra/

4. Dana Milbank: Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset

This doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but neither is it a flip accusation. Russia attacked our country in 2016. It is attacking us today. Its attacks will intensify in 2020. Yet each time we try to raise our defenses to repel the attack, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, blocks us from defending ourselves.

On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report finding that “Russian activities demand renewed attention to vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure.”

The committee concluded that “urgent steps” are needed “to replace outdated and vulnerable voting systems.” (The $380 million offered since 2016 is a pittance compared with the need.) “Despite the expense, cybersecurity needs to become a higher priority for election-related infrastructure,” the report concluded.

But one man blocks it all — while offering no alternative of his own.

Presumably he thinks whatever influence Russia exerts over U.S. elections will benefit him (he’s up for reelection in 2020) and his party.

“Shame on him,” Schumer said on the Senate floor this week.

But McConnell has no shame. He is aiding and abetting Putin’s dismantling of Americans’ self-governance. A leader who won’t protect our country from attack is no patriot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitch-mcconnell-is-a-russian-asset/2019/07/26/02cf3510-afbc-11e9-a0c9-6d2d7818f3da_story.html

5. Baltimore Sun Editorial Board: Better to have a few rats than to be one

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb."

In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.

This is a president who will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action. https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0728-trump-baltimore-20190727-k6ac4yvnpvcczlaexdfglifada-story.html

6. Rod Schoonover: The White House Blocked My Report on Climate Change and National Security

The White House blocked the submission of my bureau’s written testimony on the national security implications of climate change to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The stated reason was that the scientific foundation of the analysis did not comport with the administration’s position on climate change.

The bottom line of written testimony was this: “Climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security over the next 20 years.” In developing this assessment, I drew from peer-reviewed scientific studies and findings of the government’s own scientists. This conclusion was hardly new. The intelligence community has repeatedly warned of the dangers that climate change poses to national security. Earlier this year, for instance, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, warned in the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment” that, “Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.” (On Sunday, President Trump announced that Mr. Coats would step down shortly, to be replaced by one of his biggest defenders, Representative John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican.)

In blocking the submission of the written testimony, the White House trampled not only on the scientific integrity of the assessment but on the analytic independence of an arm of the intelligence community. That’s why I recently resigned from the job I considered a sacred duty, and the institution I loved. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/opinion/trump-climate-change.html

7. Zak Cheney-Rice: The Death Penalty Is Already a Farce. William Barr’s Plan Might Make It Torturous

The message was clear in Thursday’s announcement that the Justice Department plans to execute five prisoners by early 2020: The Trump administration is willing to pursue extreme measures to inflict pain on those it deems deserving. Attorney General William Barr’s plan ends an informal 16-year federal moratorium on executing those sentenced to death. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Barr said of the about-face.

The federal government has declined to execute any death-row inmates since 2003. Eric Holder, the AG under President Obama, personally opposed the practice and refused to pursue it even as he allowed his attorneys to seek capital punishment at trial. Barr is different. In its proclamation, his DOJ lists the men slated to die in December and January and outlines their crimes in excruciating detail. The acts described are indeed gruesome: Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois, and Dustin Lee Honken were each found guilty of murder, in some cases involving rape or child abuse, sometimes with multiple victims.

In spite of these examples, public opinion is aligned against capital punishment at higher rates today than at almost any other point since the mid 1990s, according to the Pew Research Center, reflecting a downward trend in support spanning a quarter-century. Still, 54 percent of Americans favor it, compared with 39 percent who oppose it. It’s unlikely that enough would lose sleep over these five executions to shift majority sentiment, let alone prompt the DOJ to reconsider its decision in the next few months. But capital punishment in America remains a farce. There’s no evidence that it deters crime. Its application is racist, as indicated by the disproportionate share of black people on whom it is imposed. (Black people make up 13 percent of the population but 34 percent of inmates put to death since 1976.) The U.S. is an outlier in deploying it — every European nation has abolished capital punishment except for Belarus, a dictatorship. Perhaps most salient to Barr’s announcement, it’s often carried out using lethal drugs that, rather than facilitate prisoners’ painless transition, heighten the risk of a torturous death. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/barr-death-penalty-pentobarbital.html

8. Ron Brownstein: Will Trump’s Racist Attacks Help Him? Ask Blue-Collar White Women.

Donald Trump’s turn toward more overt racism in his “go back” attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color rests on an unspoken bet: that the women who are part of his core constituencies will respond to his acrimony as enthusiastically as the men.

In both parties, most strategists I’ve spoken with agree that Trump’s bellicose attacks on the congresswomen will harden the opposition he faces among the groups most accepting of America’s changing identity: young people, minorities, and college-educated white voters, especially women. What’s more, his new offensive represents exactly the sort of behavior that has led an unprecedented number of voters satisfied with the economy to nonetheless express doubts about his leadership: In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released earlier this week, fully one-third of adults who said the economy is working for them personally still said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance. An equal share of these voters said they now intend to vote against him for reelection. To offset that unusual defection among the economically content, Trump must maximize his margins—and turnout—among the groups that have been most receptive to his exclusionary racist and cultural messages: older, non-urban, evangelical-Christian, and non-college-educated white voters.

Democratic strategists generally believe that Trump’s rhetoric will likely cost him more than it gains him in the total popular vote. But the past week has produced a collective spasm of anxiety in Democratic circles that his new attacks could nevertheless help him win a second term because the working-class whites believed to be most receptive are overrepresented in the three most crucial states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, above all, Wisconsin. (In the last state, non-college-educated whites cast fully three-fifths of all votes in 2018, according to the Census Bureau, more than in any other swing state.)

But Trump’s strategy faces a huge obstacle if working-class women don’t buy in to his message as much as working-class men. That’s for a simple reason: Every data source—from the exit polls to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of voter files to studies by Catalist, a Democratic voter-targeting firm—shows that these women reliably cast slightly more than half of all the votes from the white working class. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/trumps-go-back-attacks-white-working-class-women/594805/

9. Dan Balz: Democrats are now left with one option to end Trump’s presidency: The 2020 election

Many Democrats long have considered Robert Mueller a potential savior, as the agent of President Trump’s eventual undoing. Wednesday’s hearings on Capitol Hill probably shattered those illusions once and for all. If Democrats hope to end the Trump presidency, they will have to do so by defeating him at the ballot box in November 2020.

In reality, that has been the case for months. Still, scheduled testimony by the former special counsel before two House committees offered the possibility that he would say something that would suddenly change public perceptions and dramatically jump-start long-stalled prospects for an impeachment inquiry. That was certainly the Democrats’ goal. If anything, things could move in the opposite direction.

Regardless of the evidence of obstruction contained in Mueller’s report, impeachment is a fraught strategy for the Democrats, given public opinion and the dynamics in the Senate. After Wednesday, the prospects for impeachment appear more remote. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-are-now-left-with-one-option-to-end-trumps-presidency-the-2020-election/2019/07/24/946f6ffa-ae34-11e9-8e77-03b30bc29f64_story.html

10. Tom Nichols: Conspiracy theories, excusing Russians, attacking Mueller: How low can Republicans go?

Robert Mueller has finally testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. We learned nothing new about Mueller’s report, but we learned a lot about the Republican Party — and especially how low elected Republicans are willing to go in order to defend President Donald Trump.

The Republicans once prided themselves on being the toughest opponents of America’s enemies. They have now been reduced to inane babbling about conspiracy theories, excusing the Russians, whitewashing the hostile foreign intelligence service called WikiLeaks, and attacking a man of indisputable honor and probity — a fellow Republican, no less — all in the name of covering Trump’s tracks.

"Jesus, forgive me for ever being a Republican," MSNBC host and former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough tweeted Wednesday as he watched what he called "the screaming" and "the stupidity" of the GOP. 

I know the feeling. I left the party after the ascent of Donald Trump. But after the Mueller hearings, I have never been prouder to be an ex-Republican.

Mueller’s appearance in Congress was a day of shame for the GOP, and it is preview of the tactics we can expect from the former party of national security should its leader ever be called to account before the American people. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/07/25/republicans-attacked-mueller-and-ignored-national-security-column/1818040001/

11. Susan B. Glasser: “Accountability”? The Hearing Is How Trump Escapes

Promptly at eight-thirty Wednesday morning, Nadler began the Mueller hearing by solemnly affirming that no one, not even the President, is “above the law.” But he also got at the essence of the problem for Democrats: Trump was not exonerated, but holding him accountable requires congressional action that is not forthcoming. By the time Schiff brought down the gavel, six hours and fifty-nine minutes later, and Mueller left the room with his formidable reputation barely intact, it was painfully obvious that he had done nothing to help push congressional Democrats toward taking action. There would be no accountability.

This is something that Donald Trump has demonstrated a remarkable knack for avoiding throughout his public life. Trump has gone bankrupt and bounced back, been investigated more times than anyone can count, and has learned what it takes to win. As President, he has deployed the same tactics that helped him survive allegations of mob ties and tax fraud in his private life. He has hired aggressive lawyers, he has stalled, he has threatened. It has worked.

Late on Wednesday, many, many hours into the Mueller testimony, Representative Sean Maloney, of New York, helped to clarify just how successfully President Trump had played the prosecutor. Mueller had told Trump’s lawyers that his testimony was “vital” to resolving the investigation, Maloney pointed out, so why had Mueller finished his probe without getting it? “We understood we could subpoena the President,” Mueller allowed, but he also acknowledged that Trump would fight the subpoena all the way through the courts. And that would have taken too long, Mueller said, “because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation.”

Running out the clock, refusing to participate, stonewalling: the Trump playbook worked. This, in the end, is the lesson of the Mueller investigation. That may not be what the Democrats who run the House of Representatives expected us to learn at Wednesday’s hearing, but it was the day’s inescapable conclusion. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/accountability-the-mueller-hearing-is-how-trump-escapes-it

12. John Cassidy: Why the Mueller Hearings Were So Alarming

For the past two and a half years of Donald Trump’s Presidency, I have consoled myself with the argument that, despite all the chaos and narcissism and racial incitement and norm-shattering, the American system of government is holding itself together. When Trump attempted to introduce a ban on Muslims entering the country and sought to add a citizenship question to the census, the courts restrained him. When he railed at nato and loyal allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel, other members of his Administration issued quiet reassurances that it was just bluster. When the American people had the chance to issue a verdict on Trump’s first two years in office, they turned the House of Representatives over to the opposition party.

All of this was reassuring. But, while watching what happened on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before two House committees, I struggled to contain a rising sense of dread about where the country is heading. With Republicans united behind the President, Democrats uncertain about how to proceed, and Mueller reluctant to the last to come straight out and say that the President committed impeachable offenses, it looks like Trump’s blitzkrieg tactics of demonizing anyone who challenges him, terrorizing potential dissidents on his own side, and relentlessly spouting propaganda over social media may have worked. If so, he will have recorded a historic victory over the bedrock American principles of congressional oversight and equality before the law.

The wanton disrespect that these elected Republicans showed Mueller was perhaps the most alarming testament yet to Trump’s total conquest of the Party. In today’s G.O.P., as in Stalin’s Russia, evidently, decades of loyal public service count for nothing when the leader and his henchmen decide someone represents a threat and the apparatchiks have been ordered to take that person down. All that matters is carrying out the order and staying in the leader’s good graces. That isn’t congressional oversight. It is scorched-earth politics of a kind that is entirely antithetical to the notion of checks and balances enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-mueller-hearings-were-so-alarming

13. Dominic Sisti & Cynthia Baum-Baicker: Is President Trump Causing Toxic Stress?

Toxic stress is caused by prolonged exposure to stressful situations—violence in the home, emotional abuse by a parent, unstable housing, or economic hardship will damage the brains of children and young adults.  Adults in physically or verbally abusive relationships may also experience the ill effects of toxic stress. Toxic stress has horrible downstream effects.  It causes a prolonged activation of our stress response systems—which include hormonal changes and increased metabolic rates—that significantly increase the risk for both serious physical and mental illness. Think of toxic stress as the psychological equivalent of breathing second-hand smoke everyday for months or years.

Since his election victory, President Trump has infused stress and uncertainty into virtually every facet of American life. From travel and immigration, to healthcare, to small businesses and investment markets, his erratic behavior leaves millions of people wondering what is next. At the same time he and his surrogates flatly deny saying and doing things that were actually recorded. Offering “alternative facts” blurs the line between reality and fantasy and is a common form of abuse sometimes called gaslighting. http://www.scattergoodethics.org/is-president-trump-causing-toxic-stress

14. Eric Levitz: The Trump Tax Cuts Worked (As a Scam)

In 2017, more than 27 million Americans lacked health insurance of any kind. Many of our nation’s public schools were struggling to stock their classrooms with basic supplies, or to pay their teachers a living wage, or to keep their doors open five days a week. Underfunded rehab centers were consigning desperate opioid addicts to waiting lists amidst an overdose epidemic that would kill more Americans that one year than the Vietnam War claimed over its entire duration. Half a million Americans went homeless. More than 10 million children, in the wealthiest country on Earth, lived in “food-insecure” households.

And our congressional representatives decided that the best thing they could possibly do with $1.5 trillion in borrowed money was to give large tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations (and much smaller ones to middle-class households).

In the Trump era, Republicans have become masters of rationalizing the indefensible. But even they couldn’t defend running up the deficit (and clamping down social spending) to boost corporate profits at a time when such profits were already high. Thus, they insisted that the president’s tax cuts would neither increase the deficit nor benefit the wealthy much at all.

On the surface, it might look like Republicans were simply choosing to put cash in the hands of business owners instead of using those funds to address wrenching social problems, or boost the incomes of the indigent. But this was an illusion born of economic illiteracy. Spending $1.5 trillion on health care for the uninsured, or treatment for drug addicts, or raises for public-school teachers might sound better than devoting that same sum to regressive tax cuts. But such comparisons are rooted in a category error, Republicans explained: Unlike social spending, corporate tax cuts pay for themselves by growing our economy’s productive capacity. Give a poor man a handout, he eats for a day; give corporations a tax break, and they will make growth-enhancing investments that enable poor men to discover the “dignity of work” and the middle class to enjoy a jump in living standards. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/gdp-report-trump-tax-cuts-scam-business-investment.html

15. Jonathan Chait: Why Trump Spent His Summer Vacation Sending Racist Tweets

Trump’s professional career began in his father’s and his systematically discriminatory housing empire. Excluding African-Americans was the basis of the Trump business model. He did not merely engage in periodic acts of discrimination, but insistently violated federal law and went to war with the Department of Justice rather than amend his ways. Trump’s association of African-Americans with crime and filth, and the assumption they must be cordoned off from other Americans, is a conviction so deep it cannot be uprooted.

Trump has brought these patterns of thought with him to the presidency. One of the many oddities of his term in office is that he never observed the traditional break between campaigning and governing, and as a result never adopted even the pose of representing the entire country.

Since he continues to go to war against his enemies in perpetual campaign fashion, and since many of his enemies are domestic, this places Trump in the strange position of frequently disparaging parts of his own country. This is surely unique in American history. American presidents simply do not call American cities filthy and dangerous. George W. Bush may not have enjoyed much support in places like Baltimore, but he wouldn’t go around calling Democratic neighborhoods disgusting hellholes. It does not occur to Trump that the patriotic requirements of his office require representing the whole of it.

It is not merely that Trump is unfit for his job. He refuses, almost literally, to be president of the United States. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trump-racist-tweets-cummings-baltimore.html

16. Jonathan Chait: Trump Tries to Think Up Crime by Obama, Comes Up With ‘Wrote Book’

President Trump expressed irritation that House Democrats are challenging his unprecedented refusal to disclose his tax returns and even more unprecedented insistence on using his office for private gain. When Republicans controlled the House, he told reporters, they never investigated President Obama: "We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president. Let's look into Obama the way they've looked at me ... they could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let's subpoena all of his records."

Like many criminals, Trump believes that everybody is a crook and views demands that he follow the law as mere hypocrisy. Here he pivots immediately from his rage that he is being asked to comply with basic ethical norms — in this same interview Trump threatened to raise tariffs on French wine, a move that would benefit Trump’s own winery — to insinuations that President Obama probably committed financial crimes, too.

Trump’s claim that Republicans never investigated Obama is especially bizarre. Congress held eight separate investigations on Benghazi alone. The redundancy was deemed necessary because conservatives simply refused to accept findings that no scandal had taken place.

Trump, reaching for evidence that Obama probably did something just as unethical as Trump did, comes up with … Obama’s book. You can almost see the wheels turning in Trump’s brain as he tries to summon some damning piece of evidence about his predecessor.

He wrote a book! Is that allowed? Sure, Trump claimed to have written books, but those were all ghostwritten. He doesn’t even read books, let alone write them. “Writing books” has to be some kind of scam, right? http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trump-investigate-obama-book.html

17. Karen Tumulty: Democrats will have a better chance if they take a page from Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer

In the second night of the first debate, the NBC moderators asked can didates to lift their hands if their health plans would cover undocumented immigrants. The next day’s cover of the New York Post showed five of them with their right arms up, over the headline: “Who wants to lose the election?”

That kind of question produces a dramatic visual effect but “really does a disservice to the candidates, as well as the public,” the governor said. “I think it’s the nature of such a packed field and vying for precious coverage, and that it’s just a part of the environment that we’re living in. But ultimately, at the end of the day, people want leaders who they respect and who they believe in and who can get things done.”

Whitmer added: “That doesn’t come from raising your hand to a question. It doesn’t come from feeding into the current issue of the moment, because there will be a new issue next week and a new one the week after. It comes from really staying on the things that improve people’s lives. It’s hard to do, but a disciplined candidate who really has thoughtful solutions and a plan to execute on them, I think, is ultimately the kind of person that’s going to resonate.”

None of that may sizzle on a debate stage, but it may be the best way not to get burned in the long run. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-will-have-a-better-chance-if-they-take-a-page-from-michigans-gretchen-whitmer/2019/07/28/d18bcb5a-af0a-11e9-a0c9-6d2d7818f3da_story.html

18. Colbert I. King: Donald Trump is American democracy’s worst nightmare come true

Does the president of the United States have any regard for what comes out of his mouth?

Does he care about whom he smears, vilifies and hurts? Of course he does. President Trump does not show disdain for people who like, and are just like, him. With them, he minds his manners. To them, he shows respect. Because of their devotion to him, they are worthy of his praise, which he hands down with great abandon. They find common ground and make common cause.

This newspaper and other mainstream news outlets, refer to them as “white working-class voters," "Trump’s “base,” people who “feel left behind despite the strong economy,” “white Republicans,” “die-hard Trump supporters.” Their whiteness is a common feature. So, too, their dislikes.

They love it when Trump crosses the line and launches broadsides against black and brown people. His overtly racist language is music to their ears.

As with others in the mainstream media, Trump’s rhetoric is described as “divisive.” That suggests Trump is resorting to words that create disunity; that he is trying to cause disagreement. False.

Racial alienation and hostility already exist, churning beneath the surface. Trump is only exploiting the divisions.

Which helps explain why Trump didn’t stop the xenophobes at his North Carolina rally chanting, “Send her back.” It’s also why, in his original comments, he did not single out and condemn the white supremacists in Charlottesville who screamed racist and anti-Semitic slurs, started fights, delivered beatings.

They and Trump are drawn together in their low regard for people who aren’t white. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/28/donald-trump-is-american-democracys-worst-nightmare-come-true/

19. Bess Levin: “Hates Whites And Cops”: Trump Starts Monday With New Tirade

That the president is, in fact, a demonstrable racist is not in dispute at this point, but that didn’t stop his allies from trying to redirect the narrative to border security, with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney telling Fox News on Sunday that “this is about...the president fighting back against what he saw as being illegitimate attacks about the border,” and that “it has absolutely zero to do with race.” Unfortunately for Mulvaney, that argument didn’t quite work out so well for him. Fox host Chris Wallace pushed back, pointing out the parallels to the president’s attacks on four minority congresswomen. Moreover, it’s probably not going to hold much water following Monday morning’s new racist meltdown, this one inspired by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who was headed to Baltimore to call out Trump, a move that apparently struck a very racist nerve:

Setting aside the fact that the president is the one who’s been forced to pay $25 million for one of his (many) scams, his three-day tirade reads like a greatest-hits reel of Fox News boomer racist catnip: places where black people live are rat-infested shitholes; I’m not a racist, black people are racist; Al Sharpton hates white people and cops. Of course the argument that Trump is simply calling out politicians for failing their districts would be a lot more convincing if 1) the callouts weren’t filled with the sort of dog whistles, like “infestation,” that he exclusively reserves for nonwhite people, and 2) white people were similarly called out for their performances instead of, say, hired as chief of staff. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/donald-trump-elijah-cummings-al-sharpton

20. Bess Levin: Pissy Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Like Being Called Out For Helping Russia Hack Elections

Mitch McConnell is cranky. You see, he really doesn’t want to safeguard our elections from foreign interference—the kind Robert Mueller warned last week will happen again in 2020 unless action is taken ASAP.

We know this based on the fact that he has blocked numerous bipartisan bills intended to prevent election meddling, including one requiring Facebook, Google, and other tech companies to disclose buyers of political ads; one that would impose sanctions on any entity that attacks a U.S. election; and, most recently, one that would have required presidential campaigns to report any offers of assistance from agents of foreign governments, the kind the president has said he would gladly accept. At the same time, the senator from Kentucky doesn’t like when people accurately call him out for stonewalling any and all attempts to actually protect Democracy. It really gets him steamed up! And so, after the Washington Post op-ed denouncing McConnell for systematically preventing the U.S. “from defending ourselves,” and saying that he “is, arguably more than any other American, doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding,” well, Mitch had no choice but to throw a massive conniption on the Senate floor. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/mitch-mcconnell-russian-interference

21. Jamil Smith: Trump’s Racism Is a National Emergency

It may be easy for some to digest, but not for me. There is no getting used to this when you are in the crosshairs of this policy, when people who look like you sit patronized by a president who tells them all the time about how he got a few more of us some jobs and few more of us out of jail, then acts as though we should be satisfied with that. “What do we have to lose?” he asks, while we sit in this systematically racist America. “Why do we hate America?” he wonders aloud, as we criticize his administration for working consciously to exacerbate inequities in everything from health care to education to housing. “Why don’t we want safety and security?” Trump proclaims, as we see his government treat migrants (the ones who survive) like literal vermin while comparing our communities to “infestations.” Again, there is no getting used to this.

A white-nationalist presidency is untenable. Having to endure one while the man in the office has committed obvious crimes, such as obstruction of justice, is even worse. Add on the ever-increasing threat of white-supremacist domestic terrorism — which the FBI director warned about just last week and the administration’s anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric fuels like gasoline — and it is impossible not to conclude that the presidency is too powerful for someone as racist as Donald Trump. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-baltimore-cummings-impeach-864796/

22. Jennifer Rubin: NeverTrumpers skewer ‘Moscow Mitch’

Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) has eliminated the last vestiges of the filibuster for appointees and has rubber-stamped a slew of corrupt, incompetent and unfit nominees — many of them executive branch picks who already washed out and partisan judges with scant experience. He’s deflected criticism of President Trump’s vile racism and constant lies, and has refused to read the Mueller report, let alone recognize its stunning findings. McConnell has also become the chief obstructionist — a peculiar role for a majority leader with a president from his own party in the White House — by letting a raft of House legislation sit dormant and refusing to allow any Senate versions to reach the floor. McConnell also ballooned the deficit after misleading members and voters alike that the Trump tax cut would pay for itself.

No offense, however, is as serious and inexcusable as McConnell’s blocking of election-security legislation to prevent foreign interference with our elections. McConnell’s stated rationale, according to The Post’s Amber Phillips, is that “the federal government is already working with states to address election interference and that passing more legislation would be too heavy-handed, since states run their own elections.” The real rationale, though, is pleasing the president: Phillips reports, “Trump is so sensitive to findings that Russians tried to help him win in 2016 that a Cabinet secretary was warned against briefing him on it. . . . That puts McConnell in a tough spot: Pass legislation, which election security experts say is needed, and risk sparking the president’s ire, or block the legislation — and risk increased Russia election interference and public ridicule.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/31/nevertrumpers-severely-wound-mcconnell/