The Hill

Trump ramps up the culture war

By Jonathan Easley       October 15, 2017

President Trump is expanding the culture wars, launching new attacks against institutions that he views as liberal, elitist or both.

With his agenda stalled in Congress and his poll numbers sagging, Trump has kept his base engaged and the left inflamed by escalating feuds with key figures in sports, entertainment, tech and media, effectively dragging politics into every corner of public life.

Trump’s aim is straightforward: To convince voters that there is a privileged class that scoffs at their patriotism and cares more about political correctness and diversity than ordinary Americans, their traditions and their economic plight.

The president’s allies say he’s guided in this fight by the same instincts that got him elected. Trump’s relentless attacks, they say, cut to the heart of Trump’s appeal.

“The reality is that, to the average American voter, esoteric policy is not very digestible,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide. “But culture is policy and the president understands that.”

Democrats argue that the president is doing lasting damage to the country by needlessly stoking divisions at a time of extreme political polarization. They believe time is on their side as older, white voters give way to a more diverse and socially liberal electorate as millennials come of age.

“If he is scoring political points off these culture war issues in the short run, it’s only with a base that is now starting to crack,” said David Brock, a top Democratic operative. “Exploiting these divisions is both wrong and, in the longer run, a losing proposition politically given that the broader electorate is more tolerant and diverse.”

Past presidents have similarly stoked cultural divisions. Former President Obama waded into high-profile police brutality cases and once complained about people who “cling to guns or religion.” Former President George W. Bush leveraged anti-gay marriage sentiment among evangelical voters to boost turnout on his way to reelection in 2004.

But Trump’s culture wars differ from his predecessors in both their ferocity and frequency.

The president stirs the pot on a near-daily basis at rallies, from the Oval Office and over Twitter, attracting accusations from his critics that he’s obsessed with winning empty fights with celebrities because he’s been unable to achieve meaningful legislative reforms.

And the unabashed ferocity with which Trump has gone after his targets is evidence to his critics that he doesn’t care if he alienates or annoys large numbers of Americans, as long as his base sticks by him.

Over the past week alone, Trump and his allies have kept the fires burning with fights against the NFL, ESPN, Facebook, late-night comedians and the news media, provoking retaliatory remarks from athletes, anchors, rappers and comics.

Following Trump’s lead on the issue, Vice President Pence staged a walkout at an Indianapolis Colts football game because players kneeled in protest during the national anthem.

Some in the media credited Trump with a culture wars victory when, days later, NFL chief Roger Goodell said in a memo to players that he believes they should stand.

Trump took a victory lap on Twitter, but the NFL quickly pushed back on the president’s claim that the commissioner had demanded players stand for the anthem.

Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a top Trump donor and supporter during the 2016 election, accused Trump of muddying the issue and called him a “divider.”

NFL players initially began kneeling for the national anthem out of protest of racial injustices and police brutality, but Trump has effectively turned the debate into one about patriotism and respect for the country and the troops.

While polls show the public does not approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, most agree that players should stand during the national anthem.

The NFL has seen its ratings decline as the controversy has grown. But the sports league is only one of several weakened or unpopular cultural institutions that Trump has recently targeted for attack.

Trump has reignited his feud with ESPN, which had already seen a ratings decline as consumers cut the cord, after the network suspended anchor Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who had called Trump a white supremacist.

Trump called Hill out by name to his 40 million Twitter followers, saying that she’s the reason ESPN’s ratings have “tanked.”

That came during a week of escalating and increasingly specific threats against the news media, an industry that polls dismally. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that it’s “disgusting” that the press gets to write whatever it wants. The president also threatened to pull NBC News’s broadcasting license for publishing a story he claimed was false.

On Friday, Trump again dived headlong into the culture wars at the Values Voter Summit, a yearly gathering of Christian conservatives in Washington, D.C. There, he accused “politically correct” liberals of waging a war against American traditions, like the celebration of Christmas.

“We’re saying Merry Christmas again,” Trump said.

Now, Trump has Facebook in his crosshairs, accusing the social media giant of being biased against him. Facebook is in the midst of a massive public relations crisis and has attracted the ire of lawmakers and liberals alike over allegations that Russians used it as a tool during the election to spread fake news and negative ads about Hillary Clinton.

Tired of being mocked on late-night comedy shows, Trump has demanded equal airtime from “unfunny” comics. And Trump’s sons have accused hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert of burying the exploding sexual assault scandal around Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, a major Democratic donor.

To many on the left, Trump’s culture war instincts stem from his vanity and the effort to ensure that his core supporters stay energized.

“Somewhere along the line the president recognized that he only wants to be popular with his base,” said Sam Fulwood III, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a columnist for ThinkProgress. “He’s notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical and knows his supporters will stomp and go crazy when they hear things like this. I don’t know that it’s a win for him in the real world, but in Trump World I guess it’s a win.”

But some Democrats are wary of a president who has successfully capitalized before on liberal and media blind spots.

They say they’re not underestimating Trump’s ability to turn hot-button social issues into political gains, even as the president struggles with a historically low approval rating and Washington Republicans express frustration over the never-ending controversies and distractions.

“I’m not one to attribute some grand strategic design to Trump or [former White House chief strategist Stephen] Bannon and I don’t assume they know more than we do, but a little bit of humility is warranted on the left and by the political establishment,” said Gara LaMarche, the president of the Democracy Alliance, a leading network of liberal donors.

“At every point we thought Trump couldn’t win this election and he did. You would’ve lost a lot of money betting against Trump’s instincts in that respect. I think in general his views are held by only a minority in American society but he’s good at controlling the conversation. By design or by instinct, it’s possible he’s resonating more than we think.”

Daily Kos

Former Wharton Professor: “Donald Trump Was the Dumbest Goddam Student I Ever Had.”

By Frank Di Prima            October 12, 2017

Donald J. Trump as Many Imagine Him in Class at Wharton on the Rare Occasions that He Attended Class

Late Professor William T. Kelley taught Marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982.  Dr. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence — The Management of Marketing Information (originally published by P. Staples, London, 1968).  Dr. Kelley taught marketing management to both undergraduate and graduate students at Wharton. www.upenn.edu/…  Dr. Bill was one of my closest friends for 47 years when we lost him at 94 about six years ago.  Bill would have been 100 this year.

Donald J. Trump was an undergraduate student at Wharton for the latter two of his college years, having been graduated in 1968. www.thedp.com/…

Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”  I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”  Dr. Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity but long before he was considered a political figure.  Dr. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told of this — that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything.

This has relevance now because as recently as this week, President Trump has challenged the Secretary of State of the United States to an I.Q. contest.  www.washingtonpost.com/…  This came within two days after NBC reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the President a “moron” www.nbcnews.com/… or a “fucking moron” www.slate.com/…  The President has frequently bragged that he was a great student at a great school (Wharton). time.com/…  Thus, the public is entitled to a contrary view from somebody who was there (Dr. Kelley), and I faithfully report it here.

Bill Kelley was one smart cookie.  His text book cited above — published in the late 1960s — was standard in his time in the then-new field of “marketing intelligence” and the necessity of using computers and data bases to manage it.  See onlinelibrary.wiley.com/… which credits Bill for coining the quoted phrase.

Dr. Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians.  Please see www.thedp.com/…, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:

Another biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy.

Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.

“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.

Some classmates speculated that Trump skipped class, others that he commuted to New York on weekends. . . .

1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don … was loath to really study much.”

Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”

Thanks and R.I.P., Bill Kelley!  The words ring in my ears: “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”

Occupy Democrats

The brilliant Ali Velshi of MSNBC just hosted a TedTalk in which he detailed the dangers of fake news and what we can ALL do to stop its spread…

MSNBC  

The Rachel Maddow Show / The Maddow Blog

epa06169232 US President Donald J. Trump attends a joint news conference with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland in the East Room of the White House in…MICHAEL REYNOLDS

GOP senator asks whether Trump is ‘recanting’ his oath of office

By Steve Benen        October 12, 2017

In 2009, after President Obama had been in office for about eight months, he and some of his top aides had some unkind things to say about Fox News. As regular readers may recall, the Beltway establishment did not take it well.

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, for example, was outraged – not because the Democratic president had said something untrue, but because Obama had the audacity to criticize a major news organization directly. Marcus called the White House’s Fox criticisms “dumb,” “childish,” “petty,” “self-defeating,” and having “a distinct Nixonian … aroma.”

Soon after, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) took the Senate floor to complain that the White House’s criticism of a news organization was evidence of the president’s team creating an “enemies list.”

Eight years later, I wonder what the reaction would’ve been if Obama had threatened the broadcast licenses of news organizations that ran reports that the White House disapproved of.

Yesterday morning, Donald Trump, apparently irked by NBC News, asked rhetorically  at what point it might be “appropriate to challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks he apparently doesn’t like. He went on to suggest major American news organizations are “bad for country!” Ten hours later, the president turned the question into a statement.

“Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), an occasional Trump critic who nevertheless votes with the White House’s position in nearly every instance, responded by asking whether the president is “recanting” his oath of office – since it was nine months ago when Trump swore to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment.

And while that’s a compelling point, all of this got me thinking: if Trump’s authoritarian instincts got the best of him, and he actually tried to follow through on these threats, what would (or could) he do?

TPM’s Tierney Sneed had a helpful piece on this:

First off, NBC itself as a broadcast network isn’t licensed by the FCC. NBC’s potential vulnerability would come as the owner and operator of 28 individual local stations, including its Telemundo station (There are also dozens of NBC affiliates that NBC does not own and thus does not hold the licenses to.)

Second, the FCC license renewal process Trump suggested could be used to retaliate against NBC occurs every eight years. According to experts, it’s basically a rubber stamp and stations’ licenses are almost always renewed, though citizens in the localities of a station can technically challenge a license, as can a station’s competitors, if the station is doing competitive harm. To challenge NBC’s licenses, someone would have to do so in each of the individual local communities and they would face an uphill battle, legally speaking, especially after the deregulation that occurred starting with the Reagan administration.

I rather doubt Trump is aware of these details. Call it a hunch.

Postscript: Richard Nixon actually did use his office to go after media outlets’ licenses during the Watergate scandal in 1973. Those who compared Obama to Nixon in 2009 were apparently off by eight years (and one president).

Second Postscript: Because there’s a contradictory tweet from the president’s recent past, let’s note that in May 2013, Trump denounced the Obama administration’s efforts to “intimidate” reporters. The irony is rich.