“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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David Cay Johnston: I was sent Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return. We need the rest – right now
Why do we need to see Donald Trump’s tax returns? That’s the number one question asked by critics of the story I broke last week on DCReport.org, after the president’s 2005 tax return summary pages showed up on 13 March in the mail at my home in Rochester, New York. It’s a question I’m happy to answer as a longtime tax reporter, a Trump biographer and a citizen who has known Trump for almost 30 years.
We need to see years of tax returns from every major-party candidate for president and vice-president because, as Richard Nixon said during Watergate, “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook”. Nixon, it turned out, was a crook. While he was not indicted, his tax lawyer went to prison.
Among major-party candidates and presidents since then, only Trump has refused to release any tax information. The obvious question is: what is he hiding?
Plenty.
Jill Abramson: What is James Comey’s game? The media must expose the truth together
FBI director James Comey had a very busy July.
He closed a protracted investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. He filed no charges but blasted her conduct as “extremely careless” nonetheless, a lasting wound to her campaign. The public lashing contravened the normal procedure of staying silent on cases that are not prosecuted. Comey’s grandstanding press conference at the time seemed political.
Meanwhile, he confirmed at a congressional hearing yesterday, that in that same month the FBI had opened an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, collusion intended to hurt the Clinton campaign and help Donald Trump. Confirming the existence of an investigation before it has concluded was also unusual and possibly political. [..]
Here’s the uncomfortable question that hung in the air at yesterday’s hearing: could the FBI director’s disproportionate treatment of the two cases have influenced the outcome of the election every bit as much as any Russian efforts? We will never know.
Jessica Valenti: Trump did to Merkel what men do to women all the time
A few years ago, my husband and I ran into a mutual acquaintance at a restaurant. This young man – a person who would surely identify as progressive – spent the entirety our interaction completely ignoring me. He spoke only to my husband; he wouldn’t even look at me when I asked a direct question.
While it would be tempting to write off the exchange as simple rudeness, this brand of slight is familiar to most women. Perhaps it happens when you go to buy a car and the salesperson only speaks to your male partner. Or when you meet someone at a work event and they only introduce themselves to the male colleague beside you.
Or, if you’re Angela Merkel, maybe the notoriously misogynist president of the United States refuses to shake your hand or even deign to look at you during a press conference.
We hear quite a lot about explicit sexism like cat calls or discrimination, but less overt indignities can be just as infuriating – in part, because they’re so hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced them.
Roberrt Reich: Donald Trump’s government faces a crisis because there’s no adult in charge
America is in a crisis of governance. There is no adult in charge.
Instead, we have as president an unhinged narcissistic child who tweets absurd lies and holds rallies to prop up his fragile ego, whose conflicts of financial interest are ubiquitous, and whose presidency is under a “gray cloud” of suspicion (according to the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) for colluding with Russian agents to obtain office in the 2016 election.
He’s advised by his daughter, his son-in-law, and an oddball who once ran a white supremacist fake-news outlet.
His cabinet is an assortment of billionaires, CEOs, veterans of Wall Street, and ideologues, none of whom has any idea about how to govern and most of whom don’t believe in the laws their departments are in charge of implementing anyway.
He has downgraded or eviscerated groups responsible for giving presidents professional advice on foreign policy, foreign intelligence, economics, science, and domestic policy. He gets most of what he learns from television.
Heather Digby Parton: Echoes of 2009: Trump threatens where Obama once cajoled — but is the great deal-maker falling short?
Throughout Barack Obama’s administration, the Republicans in Congress griped that the president wasn’t sufficiently respectful of their beliefs or willing to conduct the necessary bipartisan “outreach.” President Obama did, of course, go out of his way to try to gain the support of Republicans, spending years attempting to put into effect his “grand bargain,” which was designed to settle a number of big-ticket items on both sides of the aisle. To no avail. [..]
Obama was going to “fix Washington.” When the Republicans laughed in his face and adopted a policy of total obstruction, he was deemed a failure for being unable to fulfill his promise.
Donald Trump is in no danger of that particular failure. He made a few vague references to bringing people together, but it always sounded like he left off the “or else” at the end of the sentence. Certainly nobody expected that after eight years of GOP obstruction and the most disgusting campaign in history, Democrats were going to meet this president halfway. So far, they have not.
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