USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

THE BACK STORY TO TRUMP'S ASTONISHING "STRONG CHRISTIAN" LIE

Examining Donald Trump's Claim that He Is Audited for Being a "Strong Christian"

Donald Trump Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
"I'm always being audited by the IRS, which I think is very unfair… maybe because of the fact that I'm a strong Christian and I feel strongly about it."
This was perhaps the quintessential Trump moment of the year. It came after a Republican debate in late February when the GOP frontrunner claimed that the IRS was targeting him because of his religion.
It was classic Trump. He used the IRS audit as an excuse for not revealing his tax returns even though experts and the IRS both said nothing would preclude him from doing so and tried to score with evangelical Christians in the same breath.
The reaction of CNN host Chris Cuomo (56 seconds into this video) says it all. Even though Trump is winning the evangelical vote, it is almost easier to believe that Mexico will build him a wall than that he is a "strong Christian."
So we investigated. After all, Trump is not just a public figure but a very public figure. He has written many books, including some semi-autobiographies and others laying out what he thinks about the world, and he is seemingly on TV all the time.
Trump loves to talk. In fact, he'll say just about anything. He certainly wasn't shy when he was hinting at the size of his genitals during last week's Republican presidential debate. And in 2006, he said he would date his then 24-year-old daughter if they weren't related.
But he has a tendency to get a bit tongue-tied when talking about religion.

What We Know

.

Trump was confirmed in June of 1959 in the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, New York.
"I am Presbyterian, Protestant. I go to Marble Collegiate Church," Trump told reporters when asked about his religion. "The church I was originally with was the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, which is out in Queens, New York. And I've had just great experiences in church, whether it's Sunday school or whatever it may be. But, now I go to Marble Collegiate Church."
But the church denies that he is an active member.
"Donald Trump has had a longstanding history with Marble Collegiate Church, where his parents were for years active members and one of his children was baptized," the church said in a statement to WhoWhatWhy and other media outlets.
"However, as he indicates, he is a Presbyterian, and is not an active member of Marble."
But he does have a long-standing history with the church that includes Trump getting married there to his first wife in 1977. And, according to The New York Times, it's also where he met Marla Maples, the woman with whom Trump cheated on his first wife and who would become his second wife.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale Photo credit: Roger Higgins / Wikimedia

According to Trump's own writing, the most lasting impact Marble Collegiate seems to have had on him was through the sermons of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who led the church for half a century and authored The Power of Positive Thinking.
Trump talked about his pastor in July at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit. He said Peale, who died in 1993, would give "unbelievable" sermons that made him feel disappointed when they were over.
In the next breath, by the way, Trump said he had never asked God for forgiveness.
"I think if I do something wrong, I think I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture," Trump said.
"When we go to church and when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker, I guess that's a form of asking for forgiveness," he added. "And I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed. But to me it's important I do that."
Of course, why would Trump be an active member of Marble Collegiate Church? After all, it is not his denomination.
In an email to WhoWhatWhy, Catherine Ortiz, the church's director of Marketing Communications, stressed that "Marble Collegiate Church is part of the Reformed Church in America, and is not a Presbyterian Church."
The church did not respond to follow-up questions whether its leaders believed that Trump's campaign was consistent with Marble Collegiate's stated mission of diversity and inclusion.

Two Corinthians Walk into a Bar…

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It would not be terribly shocking if Trump did not know the difference between denominations. With regard to religion, there is very little he seems to know or be certain of. Which is surprising because he has repeatedly said that the Bible is his favorite book.
When he addressed students at Liberty University earlier this year, members of the audience laughed at him for citing a passage from "Two Corinthians" instead of "Second Corinthians."
Trump blamed Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, for the error. Perkins had given him some notes ahead of the speech and had (correctly) written out the scripture reference that Trump had hoped to score points with as "2 Corinthians 3:17."

Commenting on Trump's misstep, Perkins said the episode shows that Trump "is not familiar with the Bible."

While this gaffe allowed Trump's rival Ted Cruz to wisecrack about Trump's religious naivete ("Two Corinthians walk into a bar …"), ultimately the joke is on Cruz, the son of a minister, because these missteps have not hurt the frontrunner.
Still, the Liberty University video is representative of how unsure of himself Trump appears when talking about religion or, even worse, having to answer questions about it.
Even when the interviewer is friendly and asks simple questions, Trump always has the appearance of a student who is called on by the teacher to discuss the reading assignment he had forgotten was due on that day. Trump's responses always lack specifics.
In researching his own words for this article, we were unable to find a single instance in which Trump gave an answer on a religious topic that could even remotely be labeled as "deep."
When asked about his favorite Bible verses, Trump says he does "not want to get into specifics" and then whiffs on the follow-up question on whether he is more of an "Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy."
Trump thinks for a second and answers: "Probably equal, I think. It just an incredible…the whole Bible is an incredible…" and then starts talking about how he jokes that his own book The Art of the Deal is only his second favorite book.

The Art of the Deal

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Which brings us to Trump's own writing. In total, we looked at five of his books and focused on the ones that are either autobiographical or about the state of the United States.
Donald Trump's bestseller The Art of the Deal, which was published in 1987, is an autobiography/business book billed as "an unguarded look at the mind of a brilliant entrepreneur." Trump dishes on his upbringing, family, business and his success.
He doesn't, however, talk about religion, faith, God, or the Bible.
In fact, a search for the words "faith", "religion", "church", "Christian", "God", "Jesus", "Bible", "Presbyterian" and "Protestant" yielded five combined hits. None of the words were used in a religious context and certainly not in describing Trump's spirituality.
Books by Donald J. Trump Photo credit: Tahiro Nagao / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The America We Deserve

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The second book we looked at is The America We Deserve. It was published in 2000 and is described as Trump's "position paper on major political issues facing our country."
The worldly view he expresses in this book appears to be at odds with the need for a country built on Christian values that evangelical voters would like to see. In a 2015 poll, 57% of all Republicans, and 94% of the supporters of Mike Huckabee, the one-time champion of the religious right, supported the establishment of Christianity as the national religion.
In the book, Trump referenced "faith" nine times. However, it is used only once in a context that is related to religion:
"Americans support a wall of separation between church and state because it protects their religious organizations from government encroachment, and also because it ensures that no denomination or faith is able to seize power," Trump writes.
"Religion" is mentioned twice but only in the context of how the terrorists and the Chinese don't believe in freedom of religion.
"Church" is used 11 times, but there are no references to Trump's own.
"God" is mentioned three times but the only remotely religious context in which it is used is when Trump writes "God bless" Americans who help others.
"Jesus" is mentioned once, but only because that was the first name of the designer of the book's cover.
And Trump's "favorite book," the Bible, is not mentioned at all.

Never Give Up

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Of the five Trump books we examined, Never Give Up might have been the most interesting. Published in 2008, it is billed as follows:
"In Never Give Up, Donald Trump tells the dramatic stories of his biggest challenges, lowest moments, and worst mistakes and how he uses tenacity and creativity to turn defeat into victory. Each chapter includes an inspiring story from Trump's career and concludes with expert commentary and coaching from adversity researcher and author Paul Stoltz. Inspirational and intelligent, Never Give Up will help you deal with your own personal challenges, failures, and weaknesses."
It would seem like the perfect opportunity for a religious person to talk about how his faith helped him overcome obstacles and maybe thank God for being a source of inspiration in those low moments.

However, "faith" is mentioned only six times in 206 pages and not once in a religious context. Instead, Trump talks about having faith in oneself.

"Faith in yourself can prove to be a very powerful force," Trump wrote. "…Sometimes when you are fighting a lonely battle, keeping yourself company with positive reinforcement and faith in yourself can be the invisible power that separates the winners from the losers. Losers give up."
That sounds a lot like Norman Vincent Peale, the pastor Trump so admires. Peale, by the way, is mentioned several times in the book while "Jesus" or "Christ" are not referenced at all and "God" just once (when Trump writes about how a former New York parks commissioner considered some plans he gave her "a gift from God").
The Bible is, once again, not mentioned.

Time to Get Tough

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In 2012, Trump was seriously flirting with a presidential run for the first time. To lay the groundwork, he wrote Time to Get Tough, which was published in 2011. The book is a scathing critique of President Barack Obama and lays out Trump's plan to "Make America #1 Again."
Contemplating a White House run, Trump for the first time really dips his toe into religion at least a little bit. He writes about the country having to "resolve to keep the faith," and how Islamic terrorists "hate our religion."
Trump refers to somebody as a "fellow Christian" and calls marriage "the greatest anti-poverty program God ever created." He even cites the Gospel of Matthew once.
Still, Time to Get Tough is only the precursor for what was to come.

Crippled America

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Crippled America was released in November of 2015 when Trump was already the frontrunner in the race and less than four months before Iowans cast the first votes and it describes his vision of what it takes to make America great again.
Basically, it is Trump's way of distributing his campaign platform and getting paid $25 per hardcover copy sold (we're a non-profit and got the $3.99 online version). It even has pictures the kind that will appeal to Republican voters. One shows Trump with Ronald Reagan, but there is also one of Trump on his confirmation day at First Presbyterian Church.
While it is short on specifics, Crippled America references religion more than all of the other books combined.
In a segment on "Values," Trump writes that the happiest people are those with "great families and great values."
"Religion also plays a very large factor in happiness," he adds. "People who have God in their lives receive a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction from their faith."
Trump also described the two churches he attended: First Presbyterian and Marble Collegiate Church (which stated that he is no longer an active member). And he once again writes about Rev. Peale.
He also notes that people are "shocked" when they learn that he is a Christian and a "religious person."
"They see me with all the surroundings of wealth so they sometimes don't associate that with being religious," Trump writes. "That's not accurate. I go to church. I love God, and I love having a relationship with Him."
He then immediately describes how "the Bible is the most important book ever written."
In the space of three paragraphs (and he goes on for another page or so), published after he was already running for president (his campaign manager is mentioned in the acknowledgements), Trump writes more about his faith, God and the Bible than in the hundreds of pages in similar books that were published in the nearly three decades before he ran.
In short, our extensive review of Trump's record, his books, many public statements, interviews in which the subject of spirituality came up, etc. allows only one conclusion: If Donald Trump is being audited for being a "strong Christian," then the late Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, might also have been on the IRS's short list.

[Magda Hassan]

Does any one here actually think Trump is a devout Christian or even a nominal Christian? He never struck me as religious in any way any more than he struck me as a Republican (or Democrat). He just strikes me as opportunist. I do find it appropriate that Dr Norman Vincent Peale was the long time pastor at that church though ::coffeesplutter:: Explains much more.

[Peter Lemkin]

On Tuesday, education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos faced intense questioning by Democratic senators during her confirmation hearing. DeVos is a longtime backer of charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools. She and her husband have also invested in a student debt collection agency that does business with the Education Department. Her brother is Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater.
On Tuesday, DeVos was repeatedly questioned over her role in her family's foundations, which have poured millions of dollars, if not tens of millions or hundreds of millions, into funding private Christian schools and anti-LGBT organizations, including the groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a hate group. This is New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: I understand that there is a foundation, the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which I take it is a foundation named for your parents. Is that correct?

BETSY DEVOS: It's my mother's foundation, yes.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: It's your mother's foundation. And you sit on the board.

BETSY DEVOS: I do not.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: You do not?

BETSY DEVOS: No.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: OK. So when it made its over $5 million donation to Focus on the Family, you didn't know anything about it.

BETSY DEVOS: My mother makes the decisions for her foundation.

AMY GOODMAN: Later in the confirmation hearing, Senator Hassan again questioned DeVos about her role in the family foundation.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: I just wanted to clarify the issue about whether you were on the board of your mother's foundation. I have 990s up through 2013 where you're listed as the vice president and a board member. So, was that just a mistake on your part?

BETSY DEVOS: That was a clerical error. I can assure you I have never made decisions on my mother's behalf on her foundation board.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: So the listing that you were the vice president of the board is incorrect.

BETSY DEVOS: That is incorrect.

AMY GOODMAN: That's education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos being questioned by New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan during Tuesday's confirmation hearing. Federal tax filings show DeVos was listed as the foundation's vice president for several years. Meanwhile, DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, has been quietly advising Trump's transition team, including helping vet Cabinet picks. That's according to a former senior U.S. official who spoke to The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill. On election night, Prince's wife, Stacy DeLuke, even posted pictures from inside Trump's campaign headquarters.
Well, joining us now is investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has closely covered the Prince and DeVos families for years. His most recent article about Betsy DeVos's brother is headlined "Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Trump from the Shadows." Jeremy will be the host of a new weekly podcast, Intercepted, which premieres January 25th. You can subscribe on iTunes and other platforms.
Jeremy, talk about Betsy DeVos.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, first of all, let's put this in context. Betsy DeVos is Erik Prince's brother and comes from an incredibly wealthy family in western Michigan. They basically run the city of Holland, Michigan. She and Erik's father built up a company that later, when he died, was sold to Johnson Controls for $1.6 billion in cash. Erik Prince goes off and starts Blackwater with his share of the money. But Betsy married Dick DeVos, who is the heir to the Amway corporation's fortune, the people that own the Orlando Magic basketball team. Those two families together in the 1990s gave the seed money to what became known as the radical religious right in the United States. They gave the money to Gary Bauer and the Family Research Council, to James Dobson and Focus on the Family. They poured some $200 million into Republican campaigns. In addition to that, they hadso, on the one hand, they were engaged in the legalized form of bribery that exists in this country through campaign contributions, but then they also were giving money to extremist, hateful organizations masquerading as Christian groups. But these are really hateful people that if you actually read the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, in the gospels, you find almost nothing of Jesus's teachings in what these people do.
But Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos, they really took up the mantle of radical privatization of education as their primary cause. And they've statedBetsy DeVos herself has stated that her vision of public education or of education in the U.S. is to bring the kingdom of God. I don't know if Betsy DeVos has read the First Amendment, but what she wants to doto the U.S. Constitution, but what she wants to do is to funnel public funds into religious schools.
Now, what Senator Hassan was focused in on is pretty incredible. I would say directly that Betsy DeVos lied in her testimony to the Senate, because she tried to imply, repeatedly, that she has nothing to do with her very extreme right-wing mother's foundation. And when Hassan rightly asked her, you know, "Aren't you an official in this foundation?" Betsy DeVos said no. I started then tweeting about it. I posted excerpts of the 990 tax forms that the foundation filed. And then Maggie Hassan returned to the hearing, even though Lamar Alexander, the Republican chair of the committeemost of the hearing was dominated, actually, by Lamar Alexander trying to figure out a way to justify not letting the Democrats ask questions. So, once we then posted parts of the 990, Maggie Hassan then came back, and Patty Murray, the ranking member, gave her part of her time. She then says to Betsy DeVos, "Wait a minute. I would like to clarify something, as we just heard. You know, you wereOK, you weren't on the board. You were the vice president of it." And she says, "No, I wasn't," and then says, "It was a clerical error." Now, there's probably a cleric somewhere in Michigan that's like
AMY GOODMAN: This is when Maggie Hassan pushed her on it and said, "I've got the form right here."
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. She says, "These arewe have the 990s all the"because, see, what happened is, Betsy DeVos was listed as a vice president. This wasn't just one tax filing. This is a decade worth of tax filings where Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince are listed as vice presidents of their mother's foundation, specifically during the time when they were pouring money into what the Southern Poverty Law Center says was an anti-LGBTQ hate group. And Betsy DeVos, she lied to those senators. Now, that's not the most scandalous thing at all about Betsy DeVos being named as education secretary, but it should be an immediate disqualifier.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's turn to Senator Bernie Sanders' questioning of Betsy DeVos.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: My question isand I don't mean to be rude, but do you think, if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today?

BETSY DEVOS: Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think that there would be that possibility. I've worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years to be a voice for parents and toa voice for students and to empower parents to make decisions on behalf of their children, primarily low-income children.

AMY GOODMAN: There you have Betsy DeVos responding to Bernie Sanders.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, you know, Betsy DeVos was also asked in that hearing directly about the whole scam that was Trump University, and refused to really commit to the idea that they should notthat these kinds of private so-called career colleges, like the fraud that Donald Trump engaged in, should receive federal funds. And she really would not commit to that. But there could not be a less qualified individual to run the public education, you know, ministry of the United States government than Betsy DeVos, if the point is to support public education, because what the DeVoses want, what the Princes want, is to siphon off public financing to go to religious schools, because they don't believe in a separation of church and state. They believe in a Christian supremacist theocracy that should govern the United States. And Trump was certainly not their first choice, but if you look at the kind of dominionist crowd that these guys run in, the very right-wing evangelicals, they now have come to peace with the idea that Trump is God's chosen vehicle to deliver these policies. They're very militant believers.
Betsy DeVos can try to separate herself from what her mother, Elsa Prince, does, such as giving $450,000 in one month alone to try to defeat a ballot initiative over gay marriageor, to support a ballot initiative that would ban gay marriage in the state of Californiashe lives in Michiganbut she was the vice president, along with her brother, Erik Prince, the mercenary kingpin, of that foundation at the height of its funding of these hate groups. The idea that we're going to have someone that has supported gay conversion therapy through a foundation that she was the vice president ofeven though she said to Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay woman in the Senate, "Oh, no, no, no, I view the intrinsic value of every life," she looked like she wanted to vomit, having to speak to an openly gay senator, because they hate gay people. Let's just be clear about it: The Prince family and the DeVos family, their public record suggests they hate anyone who is not straight, white and Christian.

I want to ask you about Betsy DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, who you've been talking about, the founder of Blackwater. In July, he spoke to Steve Bannon, who at the time was the head of Breitbart News, the white supremacist, white nationalist news site; Steve Bannon, who's now Trump's senior adviser. Prince said Trump should recreate a version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination ring that operated during the Vietnam War, to fight ISIS.

ERIK PRINCE: It was a vicious, but very effective, kill/capture program in Vietnam that destroyed the Viet Cong as a military force. That's what needs to be done to the funders of Islamic terror. And that would be even thethe wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East and any of the other illicit activities they're in.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Erik Prince. The significance of what he's saying here, Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, remember, Erik Prince views himself as the rightful heir to the legacy of "Wild Bill" Donovan, who was the head of the agency that was the precursor to the CIA. And, you know, immediately after 9/11, Erik Prince became very, very close to a number of people within the CIA and also Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney's office. And they jointly came up with this idea that Erik Prince could run a kind of off-the-books hit squad that could roam the world conducting assassinations for the United States, and there would be no effective paper trail and no ability for Congress to engage in any oversight. Now, Leon Panetta, who was Obama's CIA director early on in Obama's term, said, "Oh, we shut down that program, and no one was ever killed." I don't believe that for one moment. That wasthat was part of the legacy of the Phoenix Program, that was a murderous death squad operation in Vietnam, that also included enhanced interrogation. What Erik Prince being around Trump indicates to me is that
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you found out about election night and what his role is. We just have 50 seconds.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, well, Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedge funder, his daughter Rebekah ran one of the most important super PACs to Trump, Make America Number 1 super PAC. And Trumpand Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa, were two of the largest contributors to one of the most significant super PACs that supported Donald Trump. Erik Prince is very close to Robert Mercer. Prince was also at the "Heroes and Villains" party that Mercer threw in Long Island after the election. And, in fact, there's a picture that Peter Thiel, the right-wing billionaire who destroyed Gawkera picture of Peter Thiel, Donald Trump and Erik Prince, that Peter Thiel says is not safe for the internet. But it's clear that Erik Prince, through Betsy DeVos, through Robert Mercer and through his very right-wing paramilitary crowd, has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump. And our understanding, from a very well-placed source, is that Prince has even been advising Trump on his selections for the staffing of the Defense Department and the State Department.

[David Guyatt]

Does any one here actually think Trump is a devout Christian or even a nominal Christian? He never struck me as religious in any way any more than he struck me as a Republican (or Democrat). He just strikes me as opportunist. I do find it appropriate that Dr Norman Vincent Peale was the long time pastor at that church though ::coffeesplutter:: Explains much more.

I think Donald is very religious, actually.

He believes in crudity, money and pussy and daily tends to his flock as the Archbishop of the Church of Bling.

[David Guyatt]

On Tuesday, education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos faced intense questioning by Democratic senators during her confirmation hearing. DeVos is a longtime backer of charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools. She and her husband have also invested in a student debt collection agency that does business with the Education Department. Her brother is Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater.
On Tuesday, DeVos was repeatedly questioned over her role in her family's foundations, which have poured millions of dollars, if not tens of millions or hundreds of millions, into funding private Christian schools and anti-LGBT organizations, including the groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a hate group. This is New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: I understand that there is a foundation, the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which I take it is a foundation named for your parents. Is that correct?

BETSY DEVOS: It's my mother's foundation, yes.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: It's your mother's foundation. And you sit on the board.

BETSY DEVOS: I do not.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: You do not?

BETSY DEVOS: No.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: OK. So when it made its over $5 million donation to Focus on the Family, you didn't know anything about it.

BETSY DEVOS: My mother makes the decisions for her foundation.

AMY GOODMAN: Later in the confirmation hearing, Senator Hassan again questioned DeVos about her role in the family foundation.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: I just wanted to clarify the issue about whether you were on the board of your mother's foundation. I have 990s up through 2013 where you're listed as the vice president and a board member. So, was that just a mistake on your part?

BETSY DEVOS: That was a clerical error. I can assure you I have never made decisions on my mother's behalf on her foundation board.

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN: So the listing that you were the vice president of the board is incorrect.

BETSY DEVOS: That is incorrect.

AMY GOODMAN: That's education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos being questioned by New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan during Tuesday's confirmation hearing. Federal tax filings show DeVos was listed as the foundation's vice president for several years. Meanwhile, DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, has been quietly advising Trump's transition team, including helping vet Cabinet picks. That's according to a former senior U.S. official who spoke to The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill. On election night, Prince's wife, Stacy DeLuke, even posted pictures from inside Trump's campaign headquarters.
Well, joining us now is investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has closely covered the Prince and DeVos families for years. His most recent article about Betsy DeVos's brother is headlined "Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Trump from the Shadows." Jeremy will be the host of a new weekly podcast, Intercepted, which premieres January 25th. You can subscribe on iTunes and other platforms.
Jeremy, talk about Betsy DeVos.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, first of all, let's put this in context. Betsy DeVos is Erik Prince's brother and comes from an incredibly wealthy family in western Michigan. They basically run the city of Holland, Michigan. She and Erik's father built up a company that later, when he died, was sold to Johnson Controls for $1.6 billion in cash. Erik Prince goes off and starts Blackwater with his share of the money. But Betsy married Dick DeVos, who is the heir to the Amway corporation's fortune, the people that own the Orlando Magic basketball team. Those two families together in the 1990s gave the seed money to what became known as the radical religious right in the United States. They gave the money to Gary Bauer and the Family Research Council, to James Dobson and Focus on the Family. They poured some $200 million into Republican campaigns. In addition to that, they hadso, on the one hand, they were engaged in the legalized form of bribery that exists in this country through campaign contributions, but then they also were giving money to extremist, hateful organizations masquerading as Christian groups. But these are really hateful people that if you actually read the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, in the gospels, you find almost nothing of Jesus's teachings in what these people do.
But Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos, they really took up the mantle of radical privatization of education as their primary cause. And they've statedBetsy DeVos herself has stated that her vision of public education or of education in the U.S. is to bring the kingdom of God. I don't know if Betsy DeVos has read the First Amendment, but what she wants to doto the U.S. Constitution, but what she wants to do is to funnel public funds into religious schools.
Now, what Senator Hassan was focused in on is pretty incredible. I would say directly that Betsy DeVos lied in her testimony to the Senate, because she tried to imply, repeatedly, that she has nothing to do with her very extreme right-wing mother's foundation. And when Hassan rightly asked her, you know, "Aren't you an official in this foundation?" Betsy DeVos said no. I started then tweeting about it. I posted excerpts of the 990 tax forms that the foundation filed. And then Maggie Hassan returned to the hearing, even though Lamar Alexander, the Republican chair of the committeemost of the hearing was dominated, actually, by Lamar Alexander trying to figure out a way to justify not letting the Democrats ask questions. So, once we then posted parts of the 990, Maggie Hassan then came back, and Patty Murray, the ranking member, gave her part of her time. She then says to Betsy DeVos, "Wait a minute. I would like to clarify something, as we just heard. You know, you wereOK, you weren't on the board. You were the vice president of it." And she says, "No, I wasn't," and then says, "It was a clerical error." Now, there's probably a cleric somewhere in Michigan that's like
AMY GOODMAN: This is when Maggie Hassan pushed her on it and said, "I've got the form right here."
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. She says, "These arewe have the 990s all the"because, see, what happened is, Betsy DeVos was listed as a vice president. This wasn't just one tax filing. This is a decade worth of tax filings where Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince are listed as vice presidents of their mother's foundation, specifically during the time when they were pouring money into what the Southern Poverty Law Center says was an anti-LGBTQ hate group. And Betsy DeVos, she lied to those senators. Now, that's not the most scandalous thing at all about Betsy DeVos being named as education secretary, but it should be an immediate disqualifier.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's turn to Senator Bernie Sanders' questioning of Betsy DeVos.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: My question isand I don't mean to be rude, but do you think, if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today?

BETSY DEVOS: Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think that there would be that possibility. I've worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years to be a voice for parents and toa voice for students and to empower parents to make decisions on behalf of their children, primarily low-income children.

AMY GOODMAN: There you have Betsy DeVos responding to Bernie Sanders.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, you know, Betsy DeVos was also asked in that hearing directly about the whole scam that was Trump University, and refused to really commit to the idea that they should notthat these kinds of private so-called career colleges, like the fraud that Donald Trump engaged in, should receive federal funds. And she really would not commit to that. But there could not be a less qualified individual to run the public education, you know, ministry of the United States government than Betsy DeVos, if the point is to support public education, because what the DeVoses want, what the Princes want, is to siphon off public financing to go to religious schools, because they don't believe in a separation of church and state. They believe in a Christian supremacist theocracy that should govern the United States. And Trump was certainly not their first choice, but if you look at the kind of dominionist crowd that these guys run in, the very right-wing evangelicals, they now have come to peace with the idea that Trump is God's chosen vehicle to deliver these policies. They're very militant believers.
Betsy DeVos can try to separate herself from what her mother, Elsa Prince, does, such as giving $450,000 in one month alone to try to defeat a ballot initiative over gay marriageor, to support a ballot initiative that would ban gay marriage in the state of Californiashe lives in Michiganbut she was the vice president, along with her brother, Erik Prince, the mercenary kingpin, of that foundation at the height of its funding of these hate groups. The idea that we're going to have someone that has supported gay conversion therapy through a foundation that she was the vice president ofeven though she said to Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay woman in the Senate, "Oh, no, no, no, I view the intrinsic value of every life," she looked like she wanted to vomit, having to speak to an openly gay senator, because they hate gay people. Let's just be clear about it: The Prince family and the DeVos family, their public record suggests they hate anyone who is not straight, white and Christian.

I want to ask you about Betsy DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, who you've been talking about, the founder of Blackwater. In July, he spoke to Steve Bannon, who at the time was the head of Breitbart News, the white supremacist, white nationalist news site; Steve Bannon, who's now Trump's senior adviser. Prince said Trump should recreate a version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination ring that operated during the Vietnam War, to fight ISIS.

ERIK PRINCE: It was a vicious, but very effective, kill/capture program in Vietnam that destroyed the Viet Cong as a military force. That's what needs to be done to the funders of Islamic terror. And that would be even thethe wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East and any of the other illicit activities they're in.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Erik Prince. The significance of what he's saying here, Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, remember, Erik Prince views himself as the rightful heir to the legacy of "Wild Bill" Donovan, who was the head of the agency that was the precursor to the CIA. And, you know, immediately after 9/11, Erik Prince became very, very close to a number of people within the CIA and also Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney's office. And they jointly came up with this idea that Erik Prince could run a kind of off-the-books hit squad that could roam the world conducting assassinations for the United States, and there would be no effective paper trail and no ability for Congress to engage in any oversight. Now, Leon Panetta, who was Obama's CIA director early on in Obama's term, said, "Oh, we shut down that program, and no one was ever killed." I don't believe that for one moment. That wasthat was part of the legacy of the Phoenix Program, that was a murderous death squad operation in Vietnam, that also included enhanced interrogation. What Erik Prince being around Trump indicates to me is that
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you found out about election night and what his role is. We just have 50 seconds.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, well, Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedge funder, his daughter Rebekah ran one of the most important super PACs to Trump, Make America Number 1 super PAC. And Trumpand Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa, were two of the largest contributors to one of the most significant super PACs that supported Donald Trump. Erik Prince is very close to Robert Mercer. Prince was also at the "Heroes and Villains" party that Mercer threw in Long Island after the election. And, in fact, there's a picture that Peter Thiel, the right-wing billionaire who destroyed Gawkera picture of Peter Thiel, Donald Trump and Erik Prince, that Peter Thiel says is not safe for the internet. But it's clear that Erik Prince, through Betsy DeVos, through Robert Mercer and through his very right-wing paramilitary crowd, has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump. And our understanding, from a very well-placed source, is that Prince has even been advising Trump on his selections for the staffing of the Defense Department and the State Department.

Maggie, you didn't tell us about your second life....

::

To be serious for a moment, these people are such outrageous liars aren't they. It looks to me, based on Devos' instant replies that she had been briefed on the question that was going to be asked and responded accordingly.

[Magda Hassan]

I think Donald is very religious, actually.

He believes in crudity, money and pussy and daily tends to his flock as the Archbishop of the Church of Bling.

Religiously. ::

[Magda Hassan]

Maggie, you didn't tell us about your second life....

::

To be serious for a moment, these people are such outrageous liars aren't they. It looks to me, based on Devos' instant replies that she had been briefed on the question that was going to be asked and responded accordingly.

Yes, Senator Maggie Hassan
::bowtie:: ::drevil:: One of my many lives. Very exhausting.

She was completely out of her depth during the questioning. And interestingly one of her little helpers was Podesta Group's Lauren Maddox, former Sallie Mae/for profit college lobbyist who was spotted guiding Betsy DeVos at hearing. Bipartisan corruption.

[Tracy Riddle]

He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President'

On the eve of the inauguration, Trump's biographers ponder his refusal to bend his ego to his new office.
By MICHAEL KRUSE
January 18, 2017
In the days immediately after the election that shocked the world, POLITICO Magazine convened the group of people who know Donald J. Trump better than anyone outside his family. We asked his biographers the questions that were on everyone's mind: What happens next? Will the unabashedly self-promoting and self-obsessed businessman transform himself into a selfless and dignified president of the nation he was elected to lead?

Now, after more than two months of Trump's norm-shattering transition, we gathered Gwenda Blair, Michael D'Antonio and Tim O'Brien by conference call (Wayne Barrett, the dean of Trump reporters, could not participate because of illness) to assess whether Trump has continued to surprise them. Their collective wisdom? In a word, no.

From his pick of nominees for posts in his cabinet to his belligerent use of Twitter (our conversation was a day before he traded barbs with Congressman John Lewis) to his unwillingness to cut ties with his business to avoid conflicts of interest, they see the same person they've always seenthe consummate classroom troublemaker; a vain, insecure bully; and an anti-institutional schemer, as adept at "gaming the system" as he is unashamed. As they look ahead to his inauguration speech in two days, and to his administration beyond, they feel confident predicting that he will run the country much as he has run his company. For himself.
"He's not going to be that concerned with the actual competent administration of the government," D'Antonio said. "It's going to be what he seems to be gaining or losing in public esteem. So almost like a monarch. The figurehead who rallies people and gets credit for things."

Michael Kruse: The last time we talked, we were in the immediate aftermath of the shock of November 8, and now we are days away from the swearing in of Donald Trump as the president of the United States. Has the transition over these last two months gone better than you've expected, or worse?
Gwenda Blair: I think it's gone exactly as I expected. It seems like the exact same M.O. that we saw throughout his career, throughout the campaign, and now. This is all about him completely dominating the news cyclesthe use of Twitter to distract from any real questions, emphasis on loyalty, vituperation toward anyone he sees who is disloyal or doesn't toe his line, and his emphasis on conflict, the notion of setting people against each other. Now it's countries against each other. It's news organizations against each other.
Tim O'Brien: I agree with Gwenda that a lot of this has been in keeping with the same guy we've known for the last 20 years. But I don't think we're really going to know yet about the implications of anything that he's doing until he has his team in place. I think some of the people he's brought in have surprised outsiders … people like Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn and what appears to be an entire fleet of Goldman Sachs alums are joining his administration. And none of those posts, I think, were anticipated prior to him getting elected. We won't really know what the full scope of his engagement is with the world or with the American public until that team gets rolling. So some of this, I think, is premature, but there's no question that it would have been in his best interests to sit back from the Twitter show and take a breather. And he couldn't help himself. And he's opining on subjects that he knows very little about from national security to healthcare policy and others.



Michael D'Antonio: I also think that he's the same old Trump and emphasizing this combative quality and wanting to fight with just about everybody. I've been asked lately about why he seems to have affection for a guy like Putin. And the thing that I'm afraid of most, based on what I'm seeing, is that he seems to want to be the same style of leader, where he intimidates people. He tries to shame them. The most shocking thing I think he did was note all of his enemies in his New Year's message. The idea of a president actually having even the thought of all of these enemies in his head as he's welcoming the new year and greeting the country is almost crazy to me.
Kruse: Michael, in your book, and other places, too, he has talked about how much he enjoys fighting. And he certainly fought a lot of people throughout the campaign, and he hasn't stopped fighting. From Meryl Streep to the intelligence community, he's still picking fights. Do you think he is going to pick fights with leaders of other countries? In other words, is there any indication that he would be able to separate the interests of the country now from his own personal pique?
Blair: Zero.
O'Brien: Absolutely not. There will be no divide there. The whole thing has been a vanity show from the second he ran to the Republican Convention. I think we can expect to see the same on Inauguration Day. He's been unable to find a clean division between his own emotional needs and his own insecurities and simply being a healthy, strategically committed leader who wants to parse through good policy options and a wide series of public statements about the direction in which he'll take the country.
Blair: There's a fusion, I think, of his childhood, an emphasis on being combative, being killersas his dad famously instructed his boys to bebut also, I think, his own competitive nature, and then his grasp in early adulthood that being a bully and really putting it to other people and not backing down often works. He also had his church background telling him that being a success was the most important thing and that got fused with the sort of You want a crowd to show up, start a fight,' P.T. Barnum-type thing early on in his career. And then Roy Cohn as a mentor, a guy who stood for cold-eye calculus about how bullying people works. And you put all of those pieces together, that he's been doing this his whole life, and I don't see a single reason for him to back down. He's going to go full blast ahead with that.
O'Brien: His father and Roy Cohn, those are the two most singular influences on his whole life, and they provided him with a militarized, transactional view of human relationships, business dealings and the law. And he's going to carry all of that stuff and all of that baggage with him into the White House.
D'Antonio: Those early influences are essential, and I also think it's correct that he has been conducting his entire life as a vanity show, and he's been rewarded, most recently since his reality TV show, by ever-greater public interest in him. This is a guy who is a president-elect who describes himself as a ratings machine, which is an absolutely absurd thing for a president to be reflecting on, but that matters to him.
But one thing I think that we have overlooked as we see Trump trying to delegitimize others is what I suspect is a feeling he has inside that nothing he's ever achieved himself has ever been legitimate. This is a person who has never known whether anybody wants to be around him because he's a person they want to be around or they want to be around his money. And since he's promoted himself as this glamorous, incredibly wealthy person, that's the draw he's always given. So he doesn't know if he has any legitimate relationships outside of his family, and that's why he emphasizes family. … He's always kind of gaming the systemnot, in my view, winning on the merits. And even his election was with almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. So he has this deep fear that he is himself not a legitimate president, and I think that's why he goes to such great lengths to delegitimize even the intelligence community, which is the president's key resource in security, and he's going to do this demeaning and delegitimizing behavior rather than accept what they have to tell him.
Blair: I wanted to go back to one of the words that Michael used, which was "gaming the system," which is so much a part of his dad'swhat Fred Trump did, what Donald has done. Looking for the loophole, pushing it as wide as possible, going through it. Donald did it through his whole career. His dad did it through his whole career with his use of federal subsidies and tax abatements. And now we're seeing that he's gaming the White House. He's gaming, looking for the loopholes. The president is exempt from these conflict of interest laws. There's an awful lot, it turns out, that are matters of tradition, of habit, of what we expect. But they're not actually legally requiredthe tax returns, all of that. He's gaming all of that. All of the things that people thought had to be done, don't have to be done.
D'Antonio: I think Donald Trump measures himself by the number of norms that he can violate. The more he can get away with, the more he can thumb his nose at convention, the more powerful he feels.
O'Brien: He's a profoundly anti-institutional person, and I think that's part of his great appeal to voters. Voters right now are sick of institutions, and he's got no problem railing against them. I think the danger here is he's completely ill-informed and lacks, I think, the generosity of public spirit to think about what the right replacements should be for the same institutions that he's railing against.
Blair: He's the kid in the back of the class who is taunting the teacher, who is taking over, who has pushed the principal out of the principal's office, and he's appealing to that instinct that everyone has at some point in their lives to overthrow everything.
O'Brien: I remember one thing in Palm Beach at a party there. I had dinner with him and Melania, and afterwards he was cranking music up around his swimming pool as loud as he possibly could and he leaned over to me and he said, "All these stuffy so-and-so's here in Palm Beach hate how loud my music is, so I want to turn it up as loud as I possibly can, so they can hear it everywhereand I don't care if they don't like it." That's more or less what he said to me, and that's fun and funny that he's taking on the Palm Beach establishment. But the reality, too, is that he chose to move to Palm Beach and tried to become part of the community there at the same time. So at the very moment he hates the establishment, he also desperately wants to be approved by it.
D'Antonio: You know what I think is really odd about this is that this sort of makes him the classic 60s, early-70s baby-boomer, anti-establishment ruffian. Everybody talks about how it was, this cliché version of the anti-war hippie person that represents the 60s, but I think this narcissistic, anti-establishment tenor of his personality and what he's doing now makes him the inheritor of all of that chaos. He just never outgrew it.
Blair: The sleeper anti-establishment figurebecause at the time, of course, he was going to class in a coat and tie and preparing for a completely straight-ahead business future. He had no interest in the counterculture.
O'Brien: Except where it concerns doing what you want to do to the exclusion of all norms. It's a case of people who were very liberal and idealistic. It was in the pursuit of something for the community and maybe for yourself. And in Donald's case, there is no other thing than himself.
Kruse: So if he is ill-informed, is he, in your estimation, putting people into place who are informed? His hiring M.O. has been to go with his gut and prioritize "the look" and loyalty or potential loyalty over experience and credentials.
Blair: The cabinet appointments seem to me to be people who have been successful in some realm, so he takes that as proof of their abilities. But he's also looking for people that will be in conflict with everyone in that department. Down the line, it's the same kind of sowing-conflict mode that he's used throughout his career of setting people against each other so that they're not going to be loyal to each other and they're going to be loyal to him.
O'Brien: Don't you think it's kind of ironic that the one person who might be more a defender of democratic institutions is a general that he's putting in charge of the Pentagon?
Blair: Who'd have thought?
O'Brien: General [James] Mattis is the one person who seems extremely well-read and committed to a sort of well-rounded view of power and how the country works and he could impose some moderating influence on Trump. I think that's amazing to think that we're all hoping for that to happen in the person of a general who had to get a waiver to serve in the post.
Kruse: These are people who have been successful in their areas. They have also giant egos. They know a lot, more than he does. Do you think he is going to take their advice?
O'Brien: At the end of the day, the two most powerful people in his White House, other than him, are going to be Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and they're going to have the final say on everything. And whatever Gary Cohn or Rex Tillerson or General Mattis or Jeff Sessions or Steve Bannon has to say, it will all end up getting filtered through Javanka.
Kruse: Did you just say "Javanka"?
O'Brien: Yeah. Other than those two, he won't listen to anyone in a meaningful way, and he never has listened to anyone outside of his core group and family at the Trump Organization for decades, and that's not going to change.
Kruse: Can any of you think of one time that a subordinate had to tell him something bad, something he wasn't going to like? And what were the consequences?
O'Brien: You know Jack O'Donnell is a case study of that in the casino business. He routinely brought Donald bad news, but Donald either ignored it or pretended it didn't exist. Any number of people who have worked with him in his real estate dealings in New York will tell similar stories. News that contradicts his worldview gets flushed down the sort of emotional and intellectual dispose-all that I think he carries around with him from the second he gets out of bed to the minute he goes to sleep each night. He is the master of counter-reality programming, and it makes him uniquely insusceptible to advice and creative thinking.
Kruse: My read, based on reporting over the course of the last year, has often been that he is simultaneously this utter terror of a micromanager and a "don't-bother-me," "hands-off" delegaterdepending on the moment, the task, and how he's feeling. So my question is: What makes him jerk the leash? What makes him become the micromanager?
Blair: If he perceives that there's the tiniest threat to his authority, that there's any ripple of disloyalty, as he would think of itthen he's on it. Whether it's, like, a cigarette butt in the corner of the parking lot, it doesn't matterhe's got to show that he's on top of everything and that he's got eyes in the back of his head. And at the same time, in his own organization, the Trump Organizationhe would hand off authority on things. He didn't have to manage everything, but if there was any hint that anybody was doing anything other than paying 24-7 attention to his needs, then he would discover that something was a 32nd of an inch off or a second late or whatever. And that person would be cowering, and he would lash out.
With the cabinet, of course, as Tim was saying, we have to wait and see, but I think he's appointing people who, in many, if not most cases, have the exact opposite point of view from everyone in that department, and they're just going to thrash it all out, and he's going to be listening to Jared and Ivanka and sailing ahead.
D'Antonio: I think the key thing that you said, Gwenda, was that he expects people to pay attention to his needs, and the job, seems to me, when you're dealing with him, it should be about focusing on imagining what his ego requires and not contradicting him publicly. Maybe not even contradicting him one-on-one. I wonder if he'll give orders and they may not be followed and he wouldn't care if he doesn't find out about it. He's not going to be that concerned with the actual competent administration of the government. It's going to be what he seems to be gaining or losing in public esteem. So almost like a monarch. Like a modern monarch. The figurehead who rallies people and gets credit for things.
Kruse: Some of the things that his nominees have said over the last couple of sessions have contradicted himaren't they being disloyal already, in some sense? Do you think he sees it that way?
O'Brien: Well, it depends. If what Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson, for example, have said thus far in the confirmation hearings are completely in keeping with how they actually see thingsabsolutely, yes. If part of it is simply a confirmation strategy, then we won't know. But I think we owe it to both of them, at least now, to take it at face value that both of those men are being completely candid and honest about how they see things and they've already come out on very important points with contradictory viewpoints from Trump on things like water boarding and civil rights. And interactions with Russia. However, they work for him. And at the end of the day, he's going to be telling them what to do. They could offer him contradictory advice in keeping with their own values and not in keeping with hisbut, again, at the end of the day, he's the president.
D'Antonio: Do you think, though, that he would allow that kind of thing to maybe be worked out publicly in these hearings, so that, for example, on the matter of torture, he could then say, "Well, I prefer it, but my cabinet members remind me that it's against the law and as long as that's what the law is, we'll just have to go along with their advice. I'm the really tough guy. I want to do it, but my hands are tied right now."
Blair: You know he's going to use them to give himself cover.
O'Brien: He always has an escape hatch. He always builds in some way of justifying not doing the things he's promised to do on the basis of what someone else has done to him. In this case, it could be Congress, or, "We're required by the Army manual that governs interrogations to not do this torture. I wish it wasn't so but, you know, we're stuck."
Blair: He's the master of saying one thing, and then, 10 minutes later, you're seeing the opposite. What is it that he stands for? He's a moving target, and you never exactly know. So he's able to move around the landscape and never exactly be on point. So using these folks as cover? Sure. Why not?
D'Antonio: He stands for what he can get away with, and if he can't get away with it, but he made a promise on a ceremonial basis, he'll figure out a way to blame it on someone else that he can't fulfill a policy promise.
Kruse: He couldn't let go of his company, obviously. I'm wondering if he thinks Don Jr. and Eric are going to be able to run the company without him. And will he even expect them to, or is he still going to be sort of the president of the Trump Organization, in essence?
Blair: Totally. What was in those manila folders? What was in the stack of papers that was flourished at the press conference?
O'Brien: That reminded me of after, I think, he won the South Carolina primary, and at this press conference he had a table stacked high with Trump steaks and Trump water and other Trump goodies from some businesses that already were defunct.
Blair: Yeah, he's big on props, and that was a pretty good prop and his lawyer talked with a bunch of legalese and so, "Okay, that's out of the way." It's not out of the way at all. Not in the slightest and he doesn't exactlyand the idea that they're not going to do any new deals internationally. How is that defined? They're going to continue to do domestic deals? That's a pretty darn big market. There was a lot of smoke and not even any mirrors.
O'Brien: Most of what the Trump Organization does, anyways, is domesticoverseas is primarily licensing deals and three golf courses. So the idea that they're walking away from something significant by declining to do overseas deals is irrelevant in terms of the current mix of business they have. And I guess I sound like a broken record on this issue because I first wrote about his need to release his tax returns in the fall of 2015 and I first wrote about conflicts of interest last June. But conflicts of interest are going to haunt his administration if he doesn't take a clean and consistent approach towards creating a real barrier between White House policymaking and Trump Tower deal-making. And nothing he's done, including the fig leaf that he rolled out on Wednesday, is going to cure that problem. It could create real ethical lapses that tarnish the White House and the legacy and dignity of the office he's about to inhabit. And he's done nothing, including the plan he rolled out on Wednesday, to make people think he takes these kinds of ethical responsibilities seriously.
D'Antonio: This ridiculous reference he made to, "I turned down a $2 billion deal in Dubai just recently." Why is he even in a meeting with a person who is going to do that?
O'Brien: If it even happened as he said it did. He said he was offered $2 billion in that conversation. I doubt he has ever in his life been offered a $2-billion deal. Maybe that suddenly happened over the weekend right before he had a press conference so he could brag about it. But it's one of those things, I'll believe it when I see it. But even more importantly, as Michael points out, he shouldn't be having those conversations anymore, as he's about to go into the White House.
D'Antonio: He has no concern for how any of these things look because he's always gotten away with it and you can only really be sure of anything he says when you have independent paperwork or witnesses to consult. So I think that when I met with him, he told me he had zero debtand then, more recently, it was pegged at in the hundreds of millions, and I think in the last week or so, there has been reporting that it's $1.5 billion. So that's why he doesn't want to release his tax returns. That's actual hard data and he's allergic to hard data. He doesn't want anything out there.
Blair: I think that it's not quite that he doesn't care how this stuff looks. I think he does care, but he sees it as a show of strength that he can do this. He sees that he can get away with it, that he can say these contradictory things, that he can say, "I turned down a $2-billion deal," that with half a second of reflection anyone knows that's ridiculous. That never happened and if it did happen, it shouldn't have. It's not that he doesn't care about it. It's that he's boasting and bragging about it and saying, "Look, I can do this. I can get away with this and nobody can do anything about it." That's what he sees as his strength.
Kruse: He's also always been a believer in bad publicity, and that bad publicity is, in fact, good. Publicity means people are talking about him. It worked through his breakup with Ivana and his affair with Marla Maples. It worked through the casino bankruptcies. It worked certainly throughout the campaign. Can that workbad publicity is good publicitywhen you're president?
O'Brien: No, it can't. It can't be. The Trump Organization is this mom-and-pop boutique. It's got less than 100 people, I think, working for it, and he's about to take the reins of a portion of the federal government that employs over 2 million people, is global, touches on every key policy in American life, and in our overseas profile and he knows very little about most of all of that and papering that over with any kind of publicity or the good publicity, is in a strategy that's a Hail Mary. And I think he's going to be in for a rude awakening if that's how he's going to approach things, what his day-to-day life might become.
D'Antonio: I think that he's sort of playing to the kids in the classroom who hate the teacher too and really love it when someone disrupts things or maybe the person who resents the elites. He's always had a good sense of where those resentments lie because I think he feels them personally. But we need people who are gifted and intelligent to manage our affairs. And I think it's going to become evident that he's not up to it.
Kruse: So, last question. At night, when it's dark and it's quiet and he's not sleeping at the top of Trump Tower, do you think Donald Trump is worried that he's in over his head?
Blair: Not in the least. No.
D'Antonio: I would say not in the least.
Blair: No, no. He's like, "This is the best thing that's ever happened." He's won the biggest contest there is. He's got the world's attention solid for the next four years.
D'Antonio: I think about how Obama has talked about the problem in Syria being one that made it hard for him to sleep and was something he considered every night and every morning. I don't know that Trump has the ability to think that way. He's focused on his performance as a ratings machine. So if he gets more Twitter followers and imagines himself to be a star when he takes the stage at press briefings or appears in ceremonial events, that will be enough for him. He'll think that he's a success.
Blair: When he's awake at night, I don't think it's because he's awed or concerned about the responsibilities on his shoulders. It's because there's somebody he wants to get even with and how are you going to do it.
O'Brien: The only things that have kept him awake at night historically are money, sex, food, and revenge. And if you take those things out of the mix, it's not like he ponders the deeper meaning of life. I don't think he feels that he's not up to this task. I think he did at different points during the campaign, and I certainly think on election night, and the first few days after that, you could see a kind of a watering down of his bravado. But that seems to have lasted for about a millisecond. Because I think he now feels like he's fully in charge and has all the aptitude he needs for the office.

[Albert Doyle]

Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, just slipped and spoke of "Continuity Of Government" being one of their plans...

[Peter Lemkin]

The rumors coming out of the Trumpf 'team' is that he insisted on writing his own speech for the Inauguration. I find it hard to believe - but then everything about this monster is hard to believe. If that turns out to be true, it will be an ego-fest of biblical proportions. I'll be doing something other when it happens [no couldn't stand to watch] and awake to THE NIGHTMARE on Constitution Ave.