“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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Paul Krugman: The Scammers, the Scammed and America’s Fate
Many people are horrified, and rightly so, by what passes for leadership in today’s Washington. And it’s important to keep the horror of our political situation up front, to keep highlighting the lies, the cruelty, the bad judgment. We must never normalize the state we’re in.
At the same time, however, we should be asking ourselves how the people running our government came to wield such power. How, in particular, did a man whose fraudulence, lack of concern for those he claims to care about and lack of policy coherence should have been obvious to everyone nonetheless manage to win over so many gullible souls?
No, this isn’t a column about whatshisname, the guy on Twitter, who’s getting plenty of attention. It’s about Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House.
I’m writing this column without knowing the legislative fate of the American Health Care Act, Mr. Ryan’s proposed Obamacare replacement. Whatever happens in the House and the Senate, however, there’s no question that the A.H.C.A. is one of the worst bills ever presented to Congress.
Eugene Robinson: Mr. President, the disgrace is all yours
President Trump called himself “instinctual” this week, but the word he must have been groping for was “untruthful.” He lies incessantly, shamelessly, perhaps even pathologically, and his lying corrodes and dishonors our democracy.
Of course we’ve had presidents who lied — to name a few, Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam, Richard Nixon about Watergate, Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. But the key word in these examples is “about.” Other presidents had comprehensible though illegitimate reasons for lying about specific things. Trump often lies for no discernible purpose other than to pump up his own fragile ego.
He even lies about his own lies. In an interview with Time magazine, he made the “instinctual” claim and portrayed himself as a modern-day Nostradamus. “I predicted a lot of things,” he claimed. “Some things that came to you a little bit later. But, you know, we just rolled out a list.” [..]
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a conservative bastion, had this to say on Tuesday: “If President Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? Would the rest of the world? We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods.”
The president’s response: “I thought it was a disgrace that they could write that.” But no, Mr. Trump, the disgrace is all yours.
Corey Robin: The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
Give Donald Trump this: His travel ban enraged only half the country. The House Republicans’ attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, meanwhile, has alienated everyone, including members of the Republican Party itself.
The bill was supposed to go to a vote on Thursday, but the leadership, facing a likely defeat, postponed it to Friday. It was perhaps better off dead: Already a rushed, Rube Goldberg solution in search of a problem, by the time it neared the House floor it had so many compromises woven into it to win votes that, whatever happens, it will face an even bigger battle in the Senate.
It’s not simply that President Trump and the Republicans are incompetent and inexperienced, though they are: The overwhelming majority of the party’s congressional delegation wasn’t even in the House of Representatives when Barack Obama was elected to the White House, and despite his reputation as a savvy pol, Paul Ryan, who became House speaker only in 2015, has almost no record of legislative achievement.
Tim Weiner: Following the Russian Money
Counterintelligence is long, hard work. Investigators need time to string along suspects — seeking the who, what, when, where and why of the case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation tries to build 3-D chronologies of who did what to whom. Agents usually follow the money, the best evidence. That’s how the feds got Al Capone: for tax evasion.
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, is running the most explosive counterintelligence case since Soviet spies stole the secrets of the atom bomb more than 70 years ago. Some of those atomic spies didn’t speak Russian: They were Americans. We now know that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia attacked American democracy by meddling in the 2016 election. Did he enlist American mercenaries?
A tantalizing clue came at the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Monday.
First, Democrats named names: the former Trump campaign director, Paul Manafort, dismissed shortly after the F.B.I.’s investigation started in late July; then the former Trump national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, who lost his job last month. Both appear to have had pecuniary ties to Mr. Putin’s allies — in Mr. Manafort’s case, a politician and an oligarch; in Mr. Flynn’s case, RT, the news and propaganda network.
Then Mr. Comey was asked to explain the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“Sure,” the director said.
Richard Cohen: Will Trump’s health-care plan cover congenital lying?
Is there anything in President Trump’s insurance plan that covers congenital lying by federal employees?
The Congressional Budget Office ought to look into that, because if the coverage exists, the White House alone is going to sink the program deep into the red. Premiums will shoot sky-high, and ordinary liars, Hollywood producers, nutritionists, everyone at Fox News (with the exception of Chris Wallace) and all but two lawyers will be unable to afford coverage.
Already it seems that vast numbers of people in the Trump administration are in need of treatment. Trump himself has reversed the natural order of things — he lies more often than he tells the truth. In fact, several experts I consulted, whose names I cannot use because they do not exist, speculate that Trump tells the truth only when he cannot think of a lie. This condition, hereafter known as Trump Syndrome, is found in only 1 out of every 176,000 people. That there is a cluster of it in the White House is statistically impossible, but so what?
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