The Sleaziness of Donald Trump [NY Times Editorial Board]

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The Sleaziness of Donald Trump

by The Editorial Board  Oct. 7, 2016

And so we have now heard the Republican nominee for president of the United States bragging about repeated sexual assault.

Donald Trump — a man who aspires to represent the highest ideals of the nation to his fellow citizens and the world — is heard on a videotape obtained by The Washington Post talking about how he would force himself on women. He could even grab them between their legs, he boasted.

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” he said.

In a statement released after the video became public on Friday, Mr. Trump tried to minimize the conversation as “locker room banter.” As if the problem were just his words rather than his actions.

“I apologize,” he added, “if anyone was offended.”

If? Well, maybe it’s reasonable for him to wonder. This is a man who has said many outrageous things, after all, proudly violating all conventions of civic discourse with gutter attacks on women and the disabled, immigrants and minorities. He said that Senator John McCain was not a war hero and that fat women were disgusting.

Yet, those kinds of remarks have not deterred the millions of Americans who fervently support him. And the Republican establishment has remained staunchly in his corner. So it is perhaps quite understandable that Mr. Trump might wonder whether anyone might be so sensitive as to actually be offended.

But has he gone too far, at last?

Gov. Mike Pence, you are proud to be a Christian conservative. Is this a man you would want at your dinner table, let alone in the Oval Office?

Speaker Paul Ryan, you couldn’t possibly want Donald Trump as a role model for your children. Why do you diminish yourself by urging him on the country?

Senator Kelly Ayotte, you said this week in your race for re-election from New Hampshire that Mr. Trump was a role model for children. Then you said you’d misspoken but you still planned to vote for him, even though you weren’t actually endorsing him. Will you continue to tie yourself in knots like this?

The tape was made “many years ago,” Mr. Trump noted in his statement on Friday. It was made in 2005. He was then 59 years old. It would be hard for anyone to argue that the man he was then is not the man he is now.

Mr. Trump also noted that Bill Clinton had “said far worse to me on the golf course.” Who knows if that is true, and why should anyone care? Mr. Clinton is not running for president, and, at least until now, Republican politicians have not treated his private behavior as the standard by which they should be judged.

We elect our presidents in the hope that they will do their best for us, including to try — whatever their flaws and ours — to represent the best in us. There is no such hope for Donald Trump.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/opinion/the-sleaziness-of-donald-trump.html?emc=edit_th_20161008&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65886944&_r=0

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The Trump Possibility [NYT Op Ed: Donald Trump is a thug]

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The Trump Possibility

By Roger Cohen | October 3, 2016

Donald Trump is a thug. He’s a thug who talks gibberish, and lies, and cheats, and has issues, to put it mildly, with women. He’s lazy and limited and he has an attention span of a nanosecond. He’s a “gene believer” who thinks he has “great genes” and considers the German blood, of which he is proud, “great stuff.” Mexicans and Muslims, by contrast, don’t make the cut.

He’s managed to bring penis size and menstrual cycles and the eating habits of a former Miss Universe into the debate for the highest office in the land. He’s mocked and mimicked the handicapped and the pneumonia-induced malaise of Hillary Clinton. His intellectual interests would not fill a safe-deposit box at Trump Tower. There’s more ingenuity to his hairstyle than any of his rambling pronouncements. His political hero is Vladimir Putin, who has perfected what John le Carré once called the “classic, timeless, all-Russian, bare-faced whopping lie.”

This is a man who likes to strut and gloat. He’s such a great businessman he declared a loss of $916 million on his 1995 tax return, a loss so huge the tax software program used by his accountant choked at the amount, which had to be added manually. His cohorts, including the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, reckon this makes Trump a “genius” because he could offset the loss against many millions of dollars of income for years afterward and perhaps pay not a dime in taxes. All of which did a lot of good for the United States of America and all the working stiffs who did not know that losing about a billion dollars is a financial masterstroke.

And this man, with the support of tens of millions of Americans, is a hairbreadth from the Oval Office.

I am shocked — yes, shocked! — Trump’s burbling about the Iran nuclear deal in the first presidential debate has received little attention. He called it “the worst deal I think I’ve ever seen negotiated,” before suggesting “Iran has power over North Korea” and should use it, before saying Iran had been given $400 million and then $1.7 billion and then $150 billion, as well as saying, “this is one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history!”

Of course, Trump has no idea what is in the agreement, since that would require reading it, and so he would not have an inkling that it has slashed and ring-fenced Iran’s nuclear capacity until 2030, reversing the Islamic Republic’s steady accumulation of centrifuges, and has also opened the way for Boeing to sell Iran 80 commercial passenger aircraft — just the sort of job-creating deal Trump professes to like.

And this man, whose meanness and petulance and childlike inadequacies have been on display for more than a year now, may become president next month.

How is this possible? It is possible because spectacle and politics have merged and people no longer know fact from fiction or care about the distinction. It is possible because fear has entered people’s lives and that fear is easily manipulated. It is possible because technology has created anxiety-multipliers such as have never been known before. It is possible because America is a country living with the dim dissatisfaction of two wars without victory and the untold trillions spent on them. It is possible because a very large number of people want to give the finger to the elites who brought the crash of 2008 and rigged the global system and granted themselves impunity. It is possible because of growing inequality and existential dread, especially among the white losers from globalization who know minorities will be the majority in the United States by midcentury. It is possible because both major parties have abandoned the working class. It is possible because a lot of Americans feel the incumbent in the White House has undersold the United States, diminished its distinctive and exceptional nature, talked down its power, and so diluted its greatness and abdicated its responsibility for the well-being of the free world. It is possible because the identity politics embraced by urban, cosmopolitan liberals have provoked an inevitable backlash among those who think white lives matter, too. It is possible because Trump speaks to the basest but also some of the most ineradicable traits of human beings — their capacity for mob anger, their racist resentments, their cruelty, their lust, their search for scapegoats, their insecurities — and promises a miraculous makeover. It is possible because the Clinton family has been in the White House and cozy with the rich and close to the summit of a discredited political establishment for a quarter-century now and, to people who want change or bridle at dynastic privilege, that makes Hillary Clinton an unattractive candidate. It is possible because history demonstrates there is no limit to human folly or the dimensions of the disasters humanity can bring on itself.

Yes, it is possible. There is still time to stop a man who keeps stooping lower. That time is now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/opinion/the-trump-possibility.html?emc=edit_th_20161004&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65886944

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How Could Anyone Vote for Trump?

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How Could Anyone Vote for Trump?

Gail Collins | SEPT. 30, 2016

That first debate seems to have helped Hillary Clinton move ahead of Donald Trump in the polls. However, I know that many of you are asking yourselves: Why is this even a question?

Why isn’t she leading 3 to 1? This is not a normal race between a Democrat and a Republican. One of the candidates has made it clear that he has no attention span or self-control. World security experts in both parties are terrified by the idea of a Trump presidency. He’s screwed small contractors in his business dealings and bought dumb presents for himself with money from his charitable foundation — a charitable foundation, by the way, that appears to have been managed by a team of gerbils. Also, he keeps changing his positions on critical issues and has paid settlements to people alleging he discriminated against them on the basis of race or not being attractive enough.

And you know that’s just the beginning.

It’s possible Trump is just riding a swell of white-male alienation, but there’s a less depressing answer for his staying power. Americans have always been pretty pragmatic about the presidents they pick. Mostly, they go for change or not-change.

Given all the complications out there, it’s a pretty pragmatic approach. If the same president has been in office for eight years, they pick his successor from the other party. Give or take a few vice presidents, it’s a rule that goes back to Rutherford B. Hayes.

So there’s a lot of pressure in the Republican direction, and you certainly can’t argue that Donald Trump doesn’t represent change. We’re just hoping people realize it’s the kind of change you get if you decide to remove the trash by driving a bulldozer through the kitchen.

Right now, we need Republicans who can show the country that sometimes you have a candidate who’s so irresponsible, unprepared and flat-out crazy there’s got to be a change exception.

The elected officials are pretty much universally in a cowering position. But you’d think George W. Bush, who kept calling himself “The Decider,” would stop avoiding the entire question. And Jeb Bush! When reporters cornered him this week, he said, “Well, if everybody didn’t vote, that would be a pretty powerful political statement, wouldn’t it?”

Not every year you hear a former presidential candidate come out for civic sloth.

Going to the polls on Election Day is one of our core responsibilities in a democratic nation. If we gave ourselves a pass for any year when we didn’t like either option, there would be dozens of elections in which nobody came.

Hillary Clinton is an imperfect candidate who is, nevertheless, extremely well qualified to lead the country. Every day, dozens of prominent Republicans say they’re going to suck it up and vote for her because they think she can, if nothing else, at least keep the country safe. Newspapers that have never endorsed a Democrat for president in modern history have taken the brave step of coming out for Clinton. George H. W. Bush has told people he’s voting for her. (Jeb said it was unfair for people to pass along the comments of a 92-year-old man.)

When last heard from, Mitt Romney appeared to be sticking with his vague threats to vote for the Libertarian, Gary Johnson. Earlier in the year, Johnson looked like a conceivable Republican cop-out. Sure he’s a little …— libertarian, but he wants to whack the heck out of taxes, and he dismisses global warming as something we can deal with by eventually moving to another planet.

But recently, people have begun to give Johnson the attention he’s been demanding incessantly for the last year, and it turns out — he’s an idiot. We’ve all heard that he responded to a question about the Syrian crisis with “And what is Aleppo?” He had the same look of wonderment when he was asked about his international role models. “Who’s my favorite foreign leader?” he responded blankly, as if Chris Matthews had demanded that he name his favorite Fiery Furnaces song.

So even if voting for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning was not a ridiculous cop-out, we’ve eliminated Gary Johnson. That leaves only three options for people who hate both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

A) Announce you’re not going to vote, saying, “I know, Afghan voters braved death threats from the Taliban to go to the polls, but I am just too depressed.”

B) Follow the Ted Cruz lead and say you’ve decided to vote for Donald Trump. Perhaps you could wear a badge saying “I’m like Ted.” Your friends might feel this means you’re so obsessed with self-promotion you’d throw in your lot with a person who insulted your wife and suggested your father might be connected to the Kennedy assassination. But I’m sure they’ll understand you’re really only interested in the repeal of Obamacare.

C) Go vote for Hillary Clinton. Nobody sulks during critical moments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/opinion/how-could-anyone-vote-for-trump.html?emc=edit_th_20161001&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65886944

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Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President (NY Times Editorial Board)

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Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President

by The Editorial Board  Sept. 26, 2016

A straight talker who tells it like it is?

Mr. Trump, who has no experience in national security, declares that he has a plan to soundly defeat the Islamic State militants in Syria, but won’t reveal it, bobbing and weaving about whether he would commit ground troops. Voters cannot judge whether he has any idea what he’s talking about without an outline of his plan, yet Mr. Trump ludicrously insists he must not tip off the enemy.

Another of his cornerstone proposals — his campaign pledge of a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim newcomers plus the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants across a border wall paid for by Mexico — has been subjected to endless qualifications as he zigs and zags in pursuit of middle-ground voters.

Whatever his gyrations, Mr. Trump always does make clear where his heart lies — with the anti-immigrant, nativist and racist signals that he scurrilously employed to build his base.

He used the shameful “birther” campaign against President Obama’s legitimacy as a wedge for his candidacy. But then he opportunistically denied his own record, trolling for undecided voters by conceding that Mr. Obama was a born American. In the process he tried to smear Mrs. Clinton as the instigator of the birther canard and then fled reporters’ questions.

Since his campaign began, NBC News has tabulated that Mr. Trump has made 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, including three contradictory views on abortion in one eight-hour stretch. As reporters try to pin down his contradictions, Mr. Trump has mocked them at his rallies. He said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations that displease him.

An expert negotiator who can fix government and overpower other world leaders?

His plan for cutting the national debt was far from a confidence builder: He said he might try to persuade creditors to accept less than the government owed. This fanciful notion, imported from Mr. Trump’s debt-steeped real estate world, would undermine faith in the government and the stability of global financial markets. His tax-cut plan has been no less alarming. It was initially estimated to cost $10 trillion in tax revenue, then, after revisions, maybe $3 trillion, by one adviser’s estimate. There is no credible indication of how this would be paid for — only assurances that those in the upper brackets will be favored.

If Mr. Trump were to become president, his open doubts about the value of NATO would present a major diplomatic and security challenge, as would his repeated denunciations of trade deals and relations with China. Mr. Trump promises to renegotiate the Iran nuclear control agreement, as if it were an air-rights deal on Broadway. Numerous experts on national defense and international affairs have recoiled at the thought of his commanding the nuclear arsenal. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell privately called Mr. Trump “an international pariah.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced global warming as a “hoax,” although a golf course he owns in Ireland is citing global warming in seeking to build a protective wall against a rising sea.

In expressing admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Trump implies acceptance of Mr. Putin’s dictatorial abuse of critics and dissenters, some of whom have turned up murdered, and Mr. Putin’s vicious crackdown on the press. Even worse was Mr. Trump’s urging Russia to meddle in the presidential campaign by hacking the email of former Secretary of State Clinton. Voters should consider what sort of deals Mr. Putin might obtain if Mr. Trump, his admirer, wins the White House.

A change agent for the nation and the world?

There can be little doubt of that. But voters should be asking themselves if Mr. Trump will deliver the kind of change they want. Starting a series of trade wars is a recipe for recession, not for new American jobs. Blowing a hole in the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy will not secure Americans’ financial future, and alienating our allies won’t protect our security. Mr. Trump has also said he will get rid of the new national health insurance system that millions now depend on, without saying how he would replace it.

The list goes on: He would scuttle the financial reforms and consumer protections born of the Great Recession. He would upend the Obama administration’s progress on the environment, vowing to “cancel the Paris climate agreement” on global warming. He would return to the use of waterboarding, a torture method, in violation of international treaty law. He has blithely called for reconsideration of Japan’s commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. He favors a national campaign of “stop and frisk” policing, which has been ruled unconstitutional. He has blessed the National Rifle Association’s ambition to arm citizens to engage in what he imagines would be defensive “shootouts” with gunmen. He has so coarsened our politics that he remains a contender for the presidency despite musing about his opponent as a gunshot target.

Voters should also consider Mr. Trump’s silence about areas of national life that are crying out for constructive change: How would he change our schools for the better? How would he lift more Americans out of poverty? How would his condescending appeal to black voters — a cynical signal to white moderates concerned about his racist supporters — translate into credible White House initiatives to promote racial progress? How would his call to monitor and even close some mosques affect the nation’s life and global reputation? Would his Supreme Court nominees be zealous, self-certain extensions of himself? In all these areas, Mrs. Clinton has offered constructive proposals. He has offered bluster, or nothing. The most specific domestic policy he has put forward, on tax breaks for child care, would tilt toward the wealthy.

Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/why-donald-trump-should-not-be-president.html?ref=opinion

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