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 Content of the G.O.P.’s Character
Even those who have long since accepted the premise that Donald Trump is corrupt, self-centered and dishonest seem a bit shocked by his tirades over the Presidents’ Day weekend. Using the Parkland, Fla., massacre as an excuse to attack the F.B.I. for investigating Russian election intervention on his behalf — while lying about his own past denials that such intervention took place — took vileness to a new level, which is truly impressive given Trump’s previous record.
Yet if you step back a bit and think about it, Trump’s latest outbursts were very much in character — and I don’t just mean his personal character. When did you last see a member of the Trump administration, or for that matter any prominent Republican, admit error or accept responsibility for problems?
Don’t say that it has always been that way, that it’s just the way people are. On the contrary, taking responsibility for your actions — what my parents called being a mensch — used to be considered an essential virtue in politicians and adults in general. And in this as in so many things, there’s a huge asymmetry between the parties. Of course not all Democrats are honest and upstanding; but as far as I can tell, there’s almost nobody left in the G.O.P. willing to take responsibility for, well, anything.
Thomas L. Friedman: Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now
Our democracy is in serious danger.
President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.
That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.
In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
Catherine Rampell: Don’t blame ‘Washington.’ Blame the GOP.
Dysfunctional Washington refuses to work out its differences to solve problems that matter to Americans.
So say pundits and policy activists, perhaps hoping that diffuse criticism, rather than finger-pointing, will yield a government willing to govern.
But the problem isn’t “Washington.” It isn’t “Congress,” either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.
Republicans in the White House and Congress are the ones standing in the way of helping “dreamers.” They are not merely obstructing gun reform but also rolling back existing gun-control measures.
You’d never know it from the usual “blame Washington” rhetoric, but there are lots of common-sense policy changes, on supposedly unsolvable issues, that large majorities of voters from both parties support.
Eugene Robinson: Mr. Trump: They’re laughing at you, not with you
President Trump is right about one thing: They must be “laughing their asses off” in Moscow.
At him.
Faced with compelling evidence that Russian cyber-saboteurs worked to sway the 2016 election, influencing swing-state voters with lies on social media and even staging real-life campaign rallies, Trump’s only response has been a frantic and pathetic attempt to protect his own delicate ego. “But wasn’t I a great candidate?” he pleaded Sunday on Twitter.
Protecting our democracy obviously concerns Trump not at all. But you’re probably not surprised.
In a stunning indictment announced on Friday, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III laid out in painstaking detail how a group of paid Internet trolls based in St. Petersburg worked diligently to “sow discord in the U.S. political system.” They began with the aim of creating general mischief, but “by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (‘Trump Campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.” [..]
Late Saturday night, well past his usual bedtime, Trump was wide-awake and still tweeting: “The only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”
Stop laughing, Vladimir Putin. You’ll hurt yourself.
Eugene Robinson: On gun violence, we are a failed state
The surest sign a political regime is failing is its inability to do anything about a problem universally seen as urgent that has some obvious remedies. And it’s a mark of political corruption when unaccountable cliques block solutions that enjoy broad support and force their selfish interests to prevail over the common good.
On gun violence, the United States has become a corrupt failed state.
This is the only conclusion to draw from the endless enraging replays of the same political paralysis, no matter how many children are gunned down at our schools or how many innocent Americans are slaughtered at shopping centers and other public places. Whatever happens, we can’t ban assault weapons, we can’t strengthen background checks, we can’t do anything.
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