Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Richard Wolffe: Under Donald Trump, the US will no longer be the beacon of the free world

Somehow Donald Trump manages to dumb down everything. Somehow he manages to lower the bar to the point where he can play by a different set of rules. And somehow the media and elected officials just shrug their shoulders and walk away.

By his own admission, the president-elect is negotiating business deals at a time when his predecessors were, you know, filling cabinet positions and transitioning to power. He met with his Indian business partners and the Trump Organization signed a Kolkata deal last week. [..]

“It’s all good” is indeed Trump’s approach to mixing his business and political affairs. “The law is totally on my side,” he claimed, “meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”

To be clear: profiting from the presidency would not be a quaint conflict of interest.

This is not about whether Trump favors one country or president over another, gives a contract to one company or another, or spends more time making money for himself than he does boning up about policy.

There are laws on the books about US businesses influencing foreign officials with payments or other inducements. The law is called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its goal is to stamp out bribery by any US citizen.

Bribery is what the law calls favors and payments given to foreign officials in exchange for business deals. Not a conflict of interest.

Payments and favors going the other way – into the pockets of the president – are so clearly corrupt that they were forbidden by the founding fathers in the constitution.

Charles M. Blow: No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along

Donald Trump schlepped across town on Tuesday to meet with the publisher of The New York Times and some editors, columnists and reporters at the paper.

As The Times reported, Trump actually seemed to soften some of his positions: [..]

You don’t get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid after exploiting that very radicalism to your advantage. Unrepentant opportunism belies a staggering lack of character and caring that can’t simply be vanquished from memory. You did real harm to this country and many of its citizens, and I will never — never — forget that.

As I read the transcript and then listened to the audio, the slime factor was overwhelming. [..]

So let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.

I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.

No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

I know this in my bones, and for that I am thankful.

Barbara Kinsloving: Trump changed everything. Now everything counts

If you’re among the majority of American voters who just voted against the party soon to control all three branches of our government, you’ve probably had a run of bad days. You felt this loss like a death in the family and coped with it as such: grieved with friends, comforted scared kids, got out the bottle of whisky, binge-watched Netflix. But we can’t hole up for four years waiting for something that’s gone. We just woke up in another country. [..]

How uncomfortable. We crave to believe our country is still safe for mainstream folks like us and the things we hold dear. Our civic momentum is to trust the famous checks and balances and resist any notion of a new era that will require a new kind of response. Anti-Trump demonstrations have already brought out a parental tone in the media, and Michael Moore is still being labeled a demagogue. Many Democrats look askance at Keith Ellison, the sudden shooting star of the party’s leadership, as too different, too progressive and feisty. Even if we agree with these people in spirit, our herd instinct recoils from extreme tactics and unconventional leaders on the grounds that they’ll never muster any real support.

That instinct is officially obsolete.

E. J. Dionne: How to prevent Thanksgiving Armageddon

In my politically diverse extended family, Thanksgiving was always a happy version of “Crossfire” or “Firing Line,” the occasion for raucous debates over the future of our country. My childhood and early teen years coincided with the 1960s, so the discussions sometimes got bitter.

Bitter, but never devoid of love and affection. Usually, we had Thanksgiving at the home of my godparents, Aunt Do and Uncle Emile. My aunt tried briefly to ban political conflagrations but gave up, realizing that the combatants enjoyed them. My family, particularly my dad and my Uncle Ray, trained me for what I would do for a living. They taught me how to argue, how to hold intellectual ground and how to break tense discord with laughter.

This Thanksgiving may be particularly tough for families who bear any resemblance to the one I grew up in. Donald Trump promises to be the most divisive president of my lifetime — and I still remember Richard Nixon’s tenure. Nixon made liberals like me angry. Trump scares us. I truly hope I’m wrong, but I can’t help but notice his authoritarian tendencies and his apparent inability to separate his new responsibilities from his business interests.

As for his supporters, they dismiss us as snobbish left-wing elitists completely out of touch with what’s happening in the “real America.”

Hoping to help divided families maintain their solidarity, I have tried to imagine how screaming matches might coexist with moments of dialogue.