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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

by SherriD48gt Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at National Review, Tim Alberta ponders “Conservatism in the Era of Trump.” It’s not a pretty picture. There’s no one more conservative than the House Freedom Caucus, but they’ve already started to cave in to Trumpism:

Consider Trump’s stated intention to seek a $1 trillion dollar infrastructure package soon after taking office. At a conservative forum one week after the election, Raul Labrador told reporters that any such bill “has to be paid for” with spending cuts or revenues from elsewhere…But their thinking has shifted in the weeks since. According to several members, there has been informal talk of accepting a bill that’s only 50 percent paid for, with the rest of the borrowing being offset down the road by “economic growth.” It’s an arrangement Republicans would never have endorsed under a President Hillary Clinton, and a slippery slope to go down with Trump.

This is in addition to the tax cuts for the rich, which won’t be paid for at all. But why is the HFC already bending its adamantine principles against increasing the deficit? What are they afraid of? Rachael Bade tells us:

Since the election, numerous congressional Republicans have refused to publicly weigh in on any Trump proposal at odds with Republican orthodoxy, from his border wall to his massive infrastructure package. The most common reason, stated repeatedly but always privately: They’re afraid of being attacked by Breitbart or other big-name Trump supporters.

“Nobody wants to go first,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who received nasty phone calls, letters and tweets after he penned an August op-ed in The New York Times, calling on Trump to release his tax returns. “People are naturally reticent to be the first out of the block for fear of Sean Hannity, for fear of Breitbart, for fear of local folks.”

ZOMG! Phone calls, letters, and tweets, oh my! Who would have guessed that militant conservatives were so spineless? Here’s some news: I don’t get many phone calls, but I get lots of nasty emails and tweets too. So does everyone who comments on or practices politics. That’s America these days.

People often comment about how easily groups like Nazis and fascists came to power. This is how. But hell, at least in Germany and Italy people were cowed by real threats of real violence. It’s not especially heroic, but it’s understandable. In America, we’re heading down that path because people are afraid of unpleasant tweets.

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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

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The Electoral College Just Made it Official: Donald Trump Will Be President

by FrederickaHawes Posted on December 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Update, 5:39 p.m. EST: Donald Trump officially secured a majority of the Electoral College votes needed to become the next president of the United States.

As the Electoral College’s 538 members gather across the country on Monday to formally cast their ballots for the next president and vice president of the United States, protesters have flocked to state capitals to urge electors to deny Donald Trump the presidency. The normally staid process has drawn an unusual amount of attention this year, as activists have mounted various efforts to challenge the Electoral College results amid alarm over Trump’s Cabinet picks and conflicts of interest, as well as revelations about Russia’s alleged role in hacking US political targets to aid Trump.

“Shame! You don’t deserve to be an American!” one protester shouted in Wisconsin, as all 10 of the state’s electors voted to officially make Trump president. “You have sold us out!”

Numerous arrests have been made, including in Pennsylvania where 12 immigration activists were cited for disorderly conduct for protesting Trump’s victory in the state.

In Minnesota, a state that Hillary Clinton won, one elector was replaced after refusing to vote for her. A Maine Democratic elector decided to cast his protest vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton. In Washington, three electors voted for Colin Powell instead of Clinton; a fourth elector wrote in “Faith Spotted Eagle.”

The unprecedented effort to upend the Electoral College vote is unlikely to amount to much. As Mother Jones reported last week, it’s highly unlikely that enough electors will change their votes and abandon the party’s nominee. While President Barack Obama called the Electoral College process a “vestige” on Friday, he said voters searching for a “silver bullet” fix to American politics are probably in for a disappointment. The large absence of “faithless” electors revolting against Trump further fuels this notion.

On Sunday, Trump rebuked his opponents and the movement to reject his path to the White House.

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The Electoral College Just Made it Official: Donald Trump Will Be President

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Bernie Woulda Lost

by DonetteKoss Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Andrew Gelman takes issue with my claim that Bernie Sanders would have been a sure loser if he’d run against Donald Trump:

My guess would be that Sanders’s ideological extremism could’ve cost the Democrats a percentage or two of the vote….But here’s the thing. Hillary Clinton won the election by 3 million votes. Her votes were just not in the right places. Sanders could’ve won a million or two votes less than Clinton, and still won the election.

….The 2016 election was just weird, and it’s reasonable to say that (a) Sanders would’ve been a weaker candidate than Clinton, but (b) in the event, he could’ve won.

I won’t deny that Sanders could have won. Gelman is right that 2016 was a weird year, and you never know what might have happened.

That said, I really don’t buy it. This sounds like special pleading to me, and it relies on a truly bizarre scenario. We know that state votes generally follow the national vote, so if Sanders had lost 1-2 percentage points compared to Clinton, he most likely would have lost 1-2 percentage points in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania too. What’s the alternative? That he somehow loses a million votes in liberal California but gains half a million votes in a bunch of swing states in the Midwest? What’s the theory behind that?

And lucky me, this gives me a chance to bring up something else: the assertion that Sanders might very well have won those Midwestern swing states that Clinton lost. The argument is that all those rural blue-collar whites who voted for Trump thanks to his populist, anti-trade views would have voted for Sanders instead. After all, he also held populist, anti-trade views.

But this is blinkered thinking. It focuses on one positive aspect of Sanders’ platform while ignoring everything else. Take all those white working-class folks who have sucked up so much of our attention lately. Sure, many of them voted for Trump. And sure, part of the reason was his populist economics. But it wasn’t just that. They also liked the fact that he was anti-abortion and pro-gun and wanted to kick some ass in the Middle East. Would they also have voted for a guy who opposed TPP but was pro-abortion and anti-gun and non-interventionist and in favor of a gigantic universal health system and promoted free college for everyone and was Jewish? A guy who is, literally, the most liberal national politician in the country?

Sure, maybe. But if that’s what you’re counting on, you might want to rethink things. It’s absolutely true that Hillary Clinton ran 5-10 points behind Obama’s 2012 numbers in the Midwest. It’s also true that Obama was the incumbent and Mitt Romney was a pro-trade stiff who was easy to caricature as a private equity plutocrat who downsized working-class people out of their jobs. Was there more to it than that? Perhaps, and that’s something for Democrats to think about.

Whatever the case, though, Sanders would have found it almost impossible to win those working-class votes. There’s no way he could have out-populisted Trump, and he had a ton of negatives to overcome. And that’s not even taking account of how Trump would have attacked him. Sanders hasn’t had to run a truly contested election for a long time, and he flipped out at the very mild attacks he got from Hillary Clinton. I can’t even imagine how he might have reacted to Trump’s viciousness.

But I will take this chance to clarify one thing. American politics is so polarized that both parties are pretty much guaranteed about 45 percent of the two-party vote. So when I say Sanders would have lost in a landslide, that’s all I mean. Instead of Clinton’s 51-49 percent victory in the popular vote, my guess is that Sanders would lost 47-53 or so. In modern presidential politics, that’s a landslide.

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Bernie Woulda Lost

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President Obama to Putin: "We Can Do Stuff to You"

by MelissaJrw Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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In response to alleged Russian hacking of US political targets, President Barack Obama said during a press conference on Friday that the US government will “continue to send a message to Russia to not do this to us because we can do stuff to you.”

Obama, in his last press conference of 2016, defended his administration’s response to the hacks, saying that in the “hyperpartisan atmosphere” of the US presidential election “my primary concern was making sure that the integrity of the election process wasn’t damaged.” He told reporters that he wanted to ensure that the election proceeded without the impression that his administration was trying to tip the scales in favor of either candidate. “The truth of the matter is that everybody had the information,” he said. “It was out there, and we handled it the way we should have.”

Now that the election is over, Obama said his administration will fashion a response to the hacking that will send a message to the Russian government. He said some of this response would be public, but that part would play out “in a way they know but not everybody will.”

“At a point in time where we’ve taken certain actions that we can divulge properly, we will do so,” Obama said.

Obama also downplayed the value of an overt response: “The idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective I think doesn’t read the thought process in Russia very well,” Obama said.

The press conference comes on the heels of numerous media reports, citing unnamed intelligence officials, detailing Russia’s alleged role in hacking US political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had concluded that the Russian government had mounted the hacks in an effort to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump. The New York Times has laid out how the US government thinks the hacks played out. NBC has reported that intelligence officials believe that Vladimir Putin himself oversaw the hacking operation. Just before Obama spoke, the Post reported that the FBI now agrees with the CIA’s assessment that the Russian hacks were designed to help Trump.

Obama said the intelligence community will produce a final assessment on the hacks before he leaves office, and that he doesn’t want to get ahead of the report’s conclusions. But, when pressed, he alluded to Putin’s direct involvement.

“Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin,” he said. “This is a pretty hierarchical operation. Last I checked, there’s not a lot of debate and democratic deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the United States.”

Trump has consistently downplayed the accusations against Putin and Russia, calling the CIA assessment “ridiculous,” and he has claimed the allegations of Russian political interference in the presidential election are politically driven.

At a dinner with donors on Thursday, Hillary Clinton said Putin directed the hacks “because he had a personal beef against me,” one that originated after she questioned the fairness of parliamentary elections held in Russia in 2011. “Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people,” she said, “and that is a direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.” On Thursday night, Podesta published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that something is “deeply wrong with the FBI” and calling for an airing of as much evidence as can safely be made public about the hacks, along with a full, independent investigation into the matter.

In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Thursday, Obama vowed to retaliate against Russia.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action,” he said in the interview. “And we will at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may well be explicit and publicized, some of it may not be.” Obama said his administration has “been working hard to make sure that what we do is proportional, that what we do is meaningful.”

It’s unclear what form US retribution could take. Michael Daniel, a special assistant to the president and the White House cybersecurity coordinator, told Cyber Scoop on Friday that “the US government is still pulling together” a response to the hacks.

Discussing the impact of the hacks during his press conference on Friday, Obama said Russia can only weaken the United States if Americans let it happen. “The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us,” Obama said. “They are a smaller country, they are a weaker county, their economy doesn’t produce anything that anyone wants to buy except oil, gas, and arms, they don’t innovate. But they can impact us if we lose track of who we are, if we abandon our values.”

This is a developing story.

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President Obama to Putin: "We Can Do Stuff to You"

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Why Are Democrats So Damn Timid About James Comey and the FBI?

by JodyLondon1 Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is pissed:

The more we learn about the Russian plot to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and elect Donald Trump, and the failure of the FBI to adequately respond, the more shocking it gets….I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT “help desk.”

….Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.

FBI Director James Comey justified his handling of the email case by citing “intense public interest.” He felt so strongly that he broke long-established precedent and disregarded strong guidance from the Justice Department with his infamous letter just 11 days before the election. Yet he refused to join the rest of the intelligence community in a statement about the Russian cyberattack because he reportedly didn’t want to appear “political.” And both before and after the election, the FBI has refused to say whether it is investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.

I’m surprised that Democrats have been so muted about the FBI’s role in the election. If something like this had happened to Republicans, it would be flogged daily on Rush, Drudge, Fox News, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, and the Facebook pages of everyone from Sarah Palin to Alex Jones. But Democrats have been almost pathologically afraid to talk about it, apparently cowed by the possibility that Republicans will mock them for making excuses about their election loss.

That’s crazy. Here’s a quick review:

Goaded by rabid congressional Republicans, the FBI spent prodigious resources on Hillary Clinton’s email server, even though there was never a shred of evidence that national security had been compromised in any way.

In July, Comey broke precedent by calling a press conference and delivering a self-righteous speech about Clinton’s “carelessness.” Why did he do this, when FBI protocol is to decline comment on cases after investigations are finished? The answer is almost certainly that he wanted to insulate himself from Republican criticism for not recommending charges against Clinton.

Weeks later, Comey finally released the investigation’s interview notes. Only the most devoted reader of bureaucratic prose was likely to suss out their real meaning: there had never been much of a case in the first place, and contrary to Comey’s accusation, Clinton had never been careless with classified material. Like everyone else, she and her staff worked hard to exchange only unclassified material on unclassified networks (state.gov, gmail, private servers, etc.). There was a difference of opinion between State and CIA about what counted as classified, but this squabbling had been going on forever, and had driven previous Secretaries of State nuts too.

As Podesta notes, the FBI took a preposterously lackadaisical attitude toward Russia’s hacking of the DNC server. Outside of a badly-written novel, it’s hard to believe that any law enforcement organization would do as little as the FBI did against a major assault from a hostile foreign power aimed at one of America’s main political parties.

Even when plenty of evidence was amassed about Russia’s actions, Comey downplayed it in private briefings. This gave Republicans the cover they needed to insist that Obama not mention anything about it during the campaign.

Two weeks before Election Day, Comey authorized a search of Anthony Weiner’s laptop, even though there was no reason to think any of the emails it contained were new, or that any of them posed a threat to national security. Then he issued a public letter making sure that everyone knew about the new evidence, and carefully phrased the letter in the most damaging possible way.

Any one of these things could be just an accident. Put them all together, and you need to be pretty obtuse not to see the partisan pattern. In every single case, Comey and the FBI did what was best for Republicans and worst for Democrats. In. Every. Single. Case.

If you want to believe this is just a coincidence, go ahead. But nobody with a room temperature IQ credits that. The FBI has spent the entire past year doing everything it could to favor one party over the other in a presidential campaign. Democrats ought to be in a seething fury about this. Instead, they’re arguing about a few thousand white rural voters in Wisconsin and whether Hillary Clinton should have visited Michigan a few more times in October.

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Why Are Democrats So Damn Timid About James Comey and the FBI?

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Russia Ran the Most Epic Ratfucking Operation in History This Year

by nydiapalazzi3 Posted on December 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Back during the campaign, I was vaguely aware that the Russians had hacked not just the DNC, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as well. For some reason, though, I never put two and two together long enough to think about what this hack might mean. In my defense, no one else seems to have given it much thought either—despite the fact that hacked documents were showing up in local races all over the country:

The intrusions in House races in states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina can be traced to tens of thousands of pages of documents taken from the D.C.C.C., which shares a Capitol Hill office building with the Democratic National Committee….The seats that Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country.

….In Florida, Guccifer 2.0’s most important partner was an obscure political website run by an anonymous blogger called HelloFLA!, run by a former Florida legislative aide turned Republican lobbyist. The blogger sent direct messages via Twitter to Guccifer 2.0 asking for copies of any additional Florida documents. “I can send you some docs via email,” Guccifer 2.0 replied on Aug. 22….“I don’t think you realize what you gave me,” the blogger said, looking at the costly internal D.C.C.C. political research that he had just been provided. “This is probably worth millions of dollars.”

The hacked documents played a big role in a Florida congressional primary between Annette Taddeo and Joe Garcia:

After Mr. Garcia defeated Ms Taddeo in the primary using the material unearthed in the hacking, the National Republican Campaign Committee and a second Republican group with ties to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, turned to the hacked material to attack him.

….After the first political advertisement appeared using the hacked material, DCCC chair Ben Ray Luján wrote a letter to his Republican counterpart at the National Republican Congressional Committee urging him to not use this stolen material in the 2016 campaign….Ms. Pelosi sent a similar letter in early September to Mr. Ryan. Neither received a response. By October, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super PAC” tied to Mr. Ryan, had used the stolen material in another advertisement, attacking Mr. Garcia during the general election in Florida.

The basic story here is simple: the Russians hacked, the media gave the revelations big play, and Republicans gleefully made use of the Russian agitprop. Altogether, the Russians released hacked documents from four different sources:

DNC
DCCC
The Clinton Foundation
John Podesta

But nothing was ever released from any Republican sources—despite the fact that, according to the New York Times, the Russians had hacked the RNC and possibly other Republican accounts as well. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a good chance they hacked a few people at the Trump Organization too. So here’s where we are:

The Russians ran a very sophisticated operation designed to hack into both US government servers and the servers of US political organizations.
They released only hacked documents from Democratic organizations. Republicans were left alone.
The intelligence community told high-ranking leaders of both parties what was going on, but Republicans flatly opposed any public acknowledgment of what was happening.
Republicans cheerfully made use of all the hacked material, even though they knew exactly where it came from.

At this point, you need to be willfully blind to pretend this was anything other than what it was: a ratfucking operation on an epic scale aimed squarely at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. And while it was happening, Republicans were happy to play along.

It’s inevitable that more details are going to emerge about all this—about both the hacking itself and Republican complicity in making use of the Russian material. This is not something that can be forgiven quickly or easily. Republicans may or may not care about this, but they’re going to have live with a smoldering, bitter anger from their Democratic colleagues for a very long time.

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Russia Ran the Most Epic Ratfucking Operation in History This Year

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Secret CIA Report Says Russia Intervened to Help Elect Trump

by NellEUHzum Posted on December 10, 2016

Mother Jones

Update, 11:48 p.m.: The New York Times reports that American intelligence officials found with “high confidence” that Russians also hacked the Republican National Committee, but did not release any information. Based in part on this finding, intelligence officials were able to conclude that Russia intended to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign and bolster Donald Trump’s.

Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to a secret assessment by the CIA, the Washington Post reported late Friday. In a closed-door meeting last week, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the agency told US senators that it had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who had provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked DNC emails. The agency described them as “part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.”

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” a senior US official told the Washington Post. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post story comes after numerous calls from both members of Congress and President Obama to investigate Russia’s role in the election. Earlier today, Obama ordered the national intelligence community to conduct a “full review” of Russian interference in the campaign. According to the Post, the White House had attempted to gain bipartisan support for investigating Russian hacking as early as September, but Republicans resisted making such a public challenge.

There were also disagreements from intelligence officials on the CIA’s assessment:

A senior US official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior US official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.

The Trump transition team issued the following response to the story late Friday:

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Secret CIA Report Says Russia Intervened to Help Elect Trump

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Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming

by bT2jW9hX8q Posted on December 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has a lot of things to say about global warming. He’s called it an urgent problem, and he’s called it a hoax. He’s claimed it’s a scam invented by the Chinese, and he’s denied that he ever said that. He’s promised to “cancel” the historic Paris climate agreement, and he’s said he still has an “open mind” on the matter.

Some environmental activists have pointed to Trump’s unpredictable statements as evidence that he might not follow through on his campaign pledges to dismantle the Obama administration’s climate legacy. But Trump has already put one of the nation’s most prominent climate skeptics in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency transition. And just last week, one of Trump’s top aides assured Americans that the president-elect still believes climate science is mostly “bunk.”

For those keeping score at home, here’s a timeline of the Donald’s thoughts on global warming. We’ll update it from time to time.

12/6/09

Read the full the letter at Grist.

Trump signs a letter calling for urgent climate action. As Grist reported earlier this year, Trump and three of his children signed a 2009 letter to President Barack Obama calling for a global climate deal. “We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today,” declared the letter, which was signed by dozens of business leaders and published as an ad in the New York Times. “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

2/14/10

Trump changes his mind, says Gore should be stripped of Nobel Prize because it’s cold outside. According to the New York Post, Trump had changed his tune by early 2010, telling an audience at one of his golf clubs, “With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore…Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.” (He would later say he was joking about the Nobel Prize being rescinded.)

2/16/10

Trump claims scientists admitted global warming is a “con.” Around this time, Trump caught wind of the so-called “ClimateGate scandal,” in which climate deniers wrongly claimed a trove of hacked emails showed that scientists had conspired to fabricate evidence of global warming. Trump said (inaccurately) on Fox News that there was an email “sent a couple months ago by one of the leaders of global warming, the initiative…almost saying—I guess they’re saying it’s a con.” He added that “in Washington, where I’m building a big development, nobody can move because we have 48 inches of snow.”

11/6/12

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese.”

12/6/13

Trump declares global warming a “hoax.” As an unusually powerful ice storm ripped through the southern part of the United States, Trump announced that climate change is a “hoax.”

Jan. 2014

Trump says scientists are in on the hoax. On January 6, Trump went on Fox News to discuss a severe cold snap that set records across the country. “This winter is brutal,” said Trump, adding that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by “scientists who are having a lot of fun.” Trump kept up this line of argument throughout the long and miserable winter.

2014

Trump donates money to fight climate change. At some point in 2014, Trump donated $5,000 of his foundation’s money to Protect Our Winters, an advocacy group dedicated to “mobilizing the outdoor sports community to lead the charge towards positive climate action.” As the group’s website explains, “If we’re serious about slowing climate change, it’s imperative that we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on cleaner sources of energy and electricity.”

An entry in the Donald J. Trump Foundations’s 2014 tax filings

According to the New York Daily News, Trump made the donation at the request of Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Jamie Anderson, who was one of the contestants on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality show. Anderson was participating on behalf of Protect Our Winters, which, she said on the show, “brings light and inspiration to climate change.” Still, Trump remained a climate change denier. During the season premier, which aired in early 2015, Trump suggested that New York’s cold weather undermined Gilbert Gottfried’s belief in climate science:

6/17/15

Trump says it’s “madness” to call climate change our “No. 1 problem.” The day after announcing his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where he said he was “not a believer in man-made” warming. He added, “When I hear Obama saying that climate change is the No. 1 problem, it is just madness.”

9/21/15

“I’m not a believer in man-made global warming.” During the GOP primary race, Trump kept up his climate denial. Here he is on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show: “I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling…They thought the Earth was cooling. Now, it’s global warming…But the problem we have, and if you look at our energy costs, and all of the things that we’re doing to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists.”

12/1/15

Trump says it’s “ridiculous” for Obama to pursue the Paris climate agreement. The long-anticipated Paris climate negotiations began barely two weeks after the city was struck by a devastating series of terrorist attacks. As the talks kicked off, Obama called the summit “an act of defiance” against terrorism and urged the world leaders gathered there to agree to an ambitious deal to combat global warming. Trump took to Instagram to express his disapproval. “While the world is in turmoil and falling apart in so many different ways—especially with ISIS—our president is worried about global warming,” he said. “What a ridiculous situation.”

What is Obama thinking?

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Dec 1, 2015 at 8:12am PST

12/30/15

“A lot of it’s a hoax,” and “I want to use hair spray.” During a campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Trump criticized Obama for worrying too much about “the carbon footprint” of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change—an issue that Trump proceeded to conflate with the hole in the ozone layer. “I want to use hair spray,” complained Trump. “They say, ‘Don’t use hair spray, it’s bad for the ozone.’ So I’m sitting in this concealed apartment, this concealed unit…It’s sealed, it’s beautiful. I don’t think anything gets out. And I’m not supposed to be using hair spray?” He then returned to the subject of the climate hoax: “So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the—a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”

1/24/16

Trump says his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax was a “joke.” At a Democratic debate in January, Bernie Sanders criticized Trump, noting the real estate mogul “believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.” Trump responded the next day on Fox News, suggesting that his infamous 2012 tweet was a joke. “I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax,” said Trump, according to PolitiFact. “A lot of people are making a lot of money…And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business.”

May 2016

Trump wants to build a sea wall to protect his resort from global warming. Politico reported that one of Trump’s golf clubs asked officials in County Clare, Ireland, to approve construction of a sea wall to guard against the dangers of sea level rise and “more frequent storm events.” According to an environmental impact statement submitted with the application, “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct…it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates…In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring.”

5/5/16

“Trump digs coal.” Shortly after clinching the GOP nomination, Trump traveled to West Virginia, where he was endorsed by the West Virginia Coal Association. At a rally in Charleston, Trump pointed to signs being waved in the crowd. “I see over here: ‘Trump digs coal,'” he said. “That’s true. I do.” Trump promised to bring back coal mining jobs by repealing Obama’s “ridiculous rules and regulations.”

Coal miners wave signs at Trump’s May 5 rally in Charleston, West Virginia. Steve Helber/AP

5/26/16

Trump pledges to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement. In a major speech on energy policy, Trump said that during his first 100 days in office, he would “rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including” his landmark climate regulations, “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement,” and “stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”

7/26/16

Trump says he “probably” called climate change a “hoax.” In a remarkably odd exchange on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked Trump whether it was “true” that he had “called climate change a hoax.” Trump replied that he “might have” done so following the release of the ClimateGate emails. “Yeah, I probably did,” he added. “I see what’s going on.” Trump went on to say that fossil fuels “could have a minor impact” on the climate but “nothing compared to what they’re talking about.”

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
9/26/16

Trump picks leading climate skeptic to run the EPA transition. Hours before Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton, word leaked that he had chosen Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to lead his transition efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell has a long history of opposing efforts to fight climate change; he’s even accused climate scientists of “manipulating and falsifying the data.” As we reported, “Ebell has called…Obama’s Clean Power Plan ‘illegal’ and the Paris Climate Accord a ‘usurpation of the Senate’s authority.’ Any small increase in global temperatures, he has said, is ‘nothing to worry about.'”

9/26/16

Trump denies saying climate change is a Chinese hoax. During the first debate, Clinton noted that Trump “thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” In response, Trump simply lied. “I did not, I did not,” he said. “I do not say that.” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway later attempted to clarify his position, telling the Huffington Post, “What he has said is, he believes climate change is naturally occurring and is not all man-made.”

11/23/16

Trump has “open mind” on Paris agreement but still thinks scientists are misleading us. In an interview with the New York Times two weeks after his victory, Trump made a number of confusing and contradictory statements about climate science and policy. Asked if he still planned to pull out of the Paris agreement, Trump said, “I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.” He conceded that there is “some connectivity” between humans and climate change,” adding, “It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” He claimed that the “hottest day ever” was in 1898. He said climate is “a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.” He once again invoked ClimateGate, declaring, “They say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists.” And, apparently in contrast to his request to build a sea wall in Ireland, Trump even speculated that sea level rise would actually improve the Trump National Doral golf course in Florida. (He may be wrong about that.)

11/27/16

Trump’s “default position” is that climate change “is a bunch of bunk.” Following Trump’s confusing New York Times interview, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus sought to reassure supporters that the president-elect is, in fact, a climate change denier. “As far as this issue on climate change, the only thing he was saying, after being asked a few questions about it, is, ‘Look, I’ll have an open mind about it,'” Priebus explained on Fox. “But he has his default position, which is that most of it is a bunch of bunk. But he’ll have an open mind and listen to people.”

12/1/16

Ivanka Trump “wants to make climate change…one of her signature issues.” According to Politico, a “source close to” Trump’s daughter Ivanka said the first daughter “wants to make climate change—which her father has called a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese—one of her signature issues…The source said Ivanka is in the early stages of exploring how to use her spotlight to speak out on the issue.”

12/5/16

Donald and Ivanka Trump meet with Al Gore.

This story has been updated. Natalie Schreyer contributed to this article.

From: 

Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming

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Donald Trump Flips Out Yet Again

by ScotReese2858449 Posted on November 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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I still wake up each morning thinking it can’t really be true that Donald Trump will be president of the United States in less than eight weeks. I mean, he’s…he’s—he’s a willfully ignorant crackpot. He’s a ridiculous game show host. He’s a five-year-old in a 70-year-old body. He’s addicted to gossip and TV. He’s a trust fund kid who thinks he’s a great businessman. He doesn’t have the attention span to read an actual book. He loves conspiracy theories. And he’s got an ego so fragile it ought to be packed in styrofoam peanuts.

Today, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny said he was looking for evidence that Trump’s allegation of massive voter fraud was true. This instantly sent Trump into a furious tantrum, prompting one of his periodic retweet spasms. Let’s take a look at who he chose to retweet. First up is @HighonHillcrest:

Who is @HighonHillcrest? Earlier today he tweeted that Mitt Romney is the “worst kind of traitor.” A few days ago he wrote this: “When RACIST THUG @angela_rye screams, annoying voice gets higher.” (Don Lemon and Van Jones are also racist thugs. Apparently all blacks on CNN are racist thugs.) And this: “FREEDOM OF RELIGION was meant to apply to religions which do NOT advocate killing non-converts.” Next up is @JoeBowman12:

Who is @JoeBowman12? A few weeks ago he was promoting the conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton has a mixed-race son: “CNN Orders Censorship Blackout on Danney Williams story ( Bill Clinton’s alleged son ) http://Infowars.com/show.” And: “Bill Clinton ‘Son’ Tells Hillary: Step Aside http://www.infowars.com.” And: “Bill Clinton’s ‘son’ Danney Williams conducts his FIRST TV interview LIVE at http://Infowars.com/show – DON’T MISS IT!” Next up is @Filibuster:

Who is @Filibuster? He’s a 16-year-old who lives in Beverly Hills. Next up is @sdcritic:

Who is @sdcritic? Earlier today, in response to the attack at Ohio State, he tweeted: “#IslamIsADeathCult #IslamIsTheProblem #BanMuslimsNotGuns #BanSharia #IslamIsCancer #Muslims did not come to America to be Americans! WAKEUP!” And: “#OhioState: You MUST understand #studentfeed that #Islamists are barbaric 3rd world monsters ruthless subhumans.America has brought this 2U!” Finally, Trump added a last word of his own:

What kind of person is so unhinged that even though he won a presidential election, he goes nuts when he’s reminded that he lost the popular vote and (a) demands that all his minions start writing sycophantic tweets about his historic landslide victory, (b) continues stewing about it anyway and fabricates an allegation of massive voter fraud perpetrated by the Democratic Party, (c) flips out at an anodyne segment from a CNN reporter about his lies, and (d) spends his evening hunched over his smartphone rounding up a motley crew of racists, nutbags, and teenagers to assure him that he’s right?

What kind of person does this? And how easy is it to manipulate someone like this? We have a helluva scary four years ahead of us.

Original article – 

Donald Trump Flips Out Yet Again

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After the Election, Trump Maintains His Bizarre Relationship with Conspiracy-Pushing Website

by DSIColeman Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as part of a multi-tweet rant against Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin (and perhaps Michigan and Pennsylvania), President-elect Donald Trump questioned the integrity of the 2016 election.

Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232 (Michigan’s 16 were called for him today); so his victory was not exactly a landslide. But the bigger lie was that “millions” of people voted illegally, for which there is no evidence. Clinton’s lead of more than 2 million votes in the popular vote, and her campaign’s recent announcement that it would participate in the recount organized by Stein, seemed to have inspired yesterday’s tweet. But its origins trace back to a right-wing conspiracy theory that began to take hold shortly after the election.

According to the Washington Post, on November 13 Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted that he had “verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens.” He wrote that he was joining with True the Vote, a conservative group, “to initiate legal action.” The day after Phillips’ tweet, his claim was picked up by Infowars and a series of right-wing commentators and websites. True The Vote issued a statement Monday saying it “absolutely supports” Trump’s “recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote.” In an email to Mother Jones on Monday, Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, said a study of data was forthcoming. “We do have evidence that non-citizens are being registered and are voting,” she added, but she wouldn’t elaborate.

If Trump got his information for this weekend’s tweet from Infowars, it wouldn’t be the first time Team Trump cited this bizarre and unreliable source. Infowars, a conspiracy theory website run by Alex Jones, has been one of the Trump campaign’s go-to sources of information. On September 8, the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the Infowars story “Was Hillary Wearing an Earpiece During Last Night’s Presidential Forum?” Trump himself has used the site’s work to bolster way-out claims, including his references to Clinton’s alleged poor health and his false assertion that “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims were celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. Trump appeared on Jones’ internet-based talk show in December 2015 and told him, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and a conspiracy theorist who claims LBJ killed JFK, has often appeared on Infowars, and he held joint events with Jones at the Republican convention in Cleveland in July. At that convention, Jones had “special guest” credentials.

Following the election, Jones claimed that Trump called to thank him and his listeners “for fighting so hard for Americans, and for Americanism.” A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump relationship to Jones and Infowars is one of the weirdest aspects of the 2016 election. Jones’ Infowars site offers up a steady stream of red meat for the conspiratorial far right. It claims that the US government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and that the Sandy Hook massacre was “completely fake.” (It claims those children weren’t killed, and the whole thing was a ruse to make it easier for the government to push gun control.) On Monday, the site promoted Jones’ theory that the Stein recount is a means for Democratic donors to make Trump “illegitimate to cause a civil war in this country.” Another post titled “HUGE #PIZZAGATE NEWS COMING” hyped a discredited story about a Washington, DC-based pedophilia ring connected to Clinton operating out of a pizzeria. A third story maintained that Clinton has a plan to overturn Trump’s win.

Put simply, the president-elect is calling into doubt the election because of a conspiracy theory website known for pushing the most outlandish claims. Trump’s connection to Jones did not gather much attention during the campaign. But with this latest tweetstorm, Trump has indicated that he is still hobnobbing with these dark and paranoid forces—one sign that the conspiracy peddlers of Infowars will require close watching in the Trump years ahead.

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After the Election, Trump Maintains His Bizarre Relationship with Conspiracy-Pushing Website

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