After the spectacle of a Democratic National Convention featuring more Republicans than Latinos, Americans got a Republican Convention featuring—to pick just one thing— gleeful violations of the Hatch Act. That’s the law that prohibits federal employees from taking part in partisan political activities. So, things like having the Secretary of State make a campaign speech from Jerusalem, where they’re engaged on state business, or the first lady stumping with the White House Rose Garden as backdrop, or the head of Homeland Security performing a naturalization ceremony, with Trump looking on, as part of the convention—all patently illegal and unethical.
USA Today (8/26/20) framed the Trump campaign’s flagrant violation of laws against the use of the Executive Branch for political purposes as a partisan disagreement.
But besides framing it as “many Democrats were outraged,” as did USA Today (8/26/20), elite media normalized the behavior with passivity, like the New York Times headline (8/26/20), pointed out by Eric Boehlert in his newsletter Press Run (8/27/20), “At RNC, Trump Uses Tools of Presidency in Aim to Broaden Appeal.”
The same press corps for whom this is just “oh there he goes, breaking with precedent again,” had a very different response, Boehlert reminds, when Al Gore was accused of violating the Hatch Act for making campaign fundraising phone calls from his White House office as vice president. The New York Times editorial page (3/5/97) called for an independent counsel to launch a major investigation; the House spent $7 million investigating, and the Senate held three months of hearings.
But Trump, he’s just “using the tools of presidency” (or he “leverages powers of office,” as an updated version of the headline read).
For the New York Times (8/3/20), Trump threatening to ban a company based on the nationality of its owners, and then demanding a cut of any resulting forced sale, is simply an “impulse to act as CEO” that his “predecessors would have avoided.”
It evokes another recent Times headline, when Trump was threatening to ban the app TikTok, explicitly because of its “Chinese ownership”—or else, he said, it could get taken over by Microsoft, in which case the US Treasury should get a cut since it was his threat that made the sale possible? The BBC, with restraint, called that “almost Mafia-like behavior,” but, as Dan Froomkin of Press Watch spotlighted (Twitter, 8/4/20), the New York Times (8/3/20) described it in a headline as Trump’s “Impulse to Act as CEO to Corporate America”—his “interventions in company dealings based on his own instincts” being, you guessed it, “a departure” from the “approach of predecessors.”
Elite journalists are no doubt clearing their shelves for the awards they expect to win for the fearless and high-minded excoriations of the Trump presidency they will write…when it’s over. Too bad they can’t muster up that courage while it matters.
Featured Image: Donald Trump using the White House as a stage set for the Republican National Convention.
Do those “elite” journalists lack courage
Or conscience?
At the 2012 Democratic Convention, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Sec. of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Sec. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Sec. of Education Arne Duncan, Sec. of Vet Affairs Eric Shinseki all spoke and weren’t arrested for violating some Hatch law or sacred norms or whatever you’re so upset about.
The Hatch Act was originally sponsored by the republican party, back in the 30’s. Attempting to denigrate the pedigreed history & legal findings which are in support of the act’s basic ideals is clearly the scrivelings of a minor astro-turfing lacky. I bet you know quite well why the act exists and what sort of criminal activity it was meant to prevent. Just as I would bet you wouldn’t hesitate if someone paid you to pour the gasoline on the constitution
I know nothing of the sort. I oppose hypocrisy. And I oppose the likes of Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton and others as they all took their daily piss on the Constitution. The times to call this out is every time, not just when your middle school clique party is in opposition.
And as above, I know nothing of the sort. I can’t tell a hatch act from that emoluments thing or the espionage BS used against only Manning/Assange or any of the other archaic utterly irrelevant “rules” that people wake up from the mothballs to pretend to be outraged when a political person not of their clique does something.
Give me a break. And “ideals”. Oh the lofty norms. Smile when you drone bomb weddings and first responders. Otherwise the “ideals” and norm police might get you and write an Op-ed pretending to be utterly aghast. The very democracy is at stake, the Universe itself might not survive, blah blah blah.
Ancient US Law that’s never been undone: One can only beat a woman on the steps of a church with a 4-foot rod, no more than that.
Barack Obama beats a woman with a 4-foot rod.
Donald Trump beats a woman with a 4-foot, one inch rod.
You and Janine: OH MY GOD THE HORRORS. What a breaking of the norms! Let’s focus on prosecuting and impeaching Trump for that extra inch! That’s the only thing that matters!
I’m sad that Janine and others have become histrionic insane people whose tethers to reality are many thousands of feet below, as they float off into TDS space, or whatever else comforts them, of their insular middle-school-level fake worries.
Joe Biden has murdered at least 500,000 innocent Iraqis. And if the new President will likely murder hundreds of thousands of other foreign innocent people.
Murdering people and illegally invading countries and Genocide as in Yemen by Barack Obama, is btw also “patently illegal” via the Constitution and it’s entered treaties.
But maybe we should focus on…AMERICANS. The other 95% of humans are kind of just only useful as a tool every four years to fake caring about. Same as immigrants, journalists, etc. Fake concern from fake poseurs such as yourself and Janine Jackson.
You do realize they didn’t engage in campaign activity while on taxpayer-funded property or while on taxpayer-funded time, right?
It’s a pretty critical distinction and pretty hard to miss.
“critical”
You people are very concerned about the most utterly stupid, inane, meaningless things. Total cognitive dissonance. Middle school children whistling past the graveyard.
Good thing there isn’t an 1837 law governing the amount of times a politician can breathe in a minute. If Trump or Pelosi or whoever your middle-school clique enemy is, you’d be all over that. “Pelosi breathed 22 times in a minute, with tax-payer air! Breaking all the norms!! CRITICAL!”
Yes, it’s a critical distinction. Don’t use taxpayer resources for your campaigning. Obama didn’t. Trump did. Blatantly. It’s a problem. Sorry you don’t think it is, but the Hatch Act fucking says it is.
critical taxpayer resources
$4,000,000,000,000 given to corporations a few months ago, siphoned and transferred [currently and next, with calls for “austerity”] from the poor and small… and you and Janine are worried about an irrelevant side issue that costs “taxpayers” what, $200 total? $0? What’s the issue exactly? Was it $10,000 taxpayer money?
You folks are great for exposing Trump’s and GOP’s hypocracy in violating Laws when it soots them, then showing Corp Media’s and Republican double standards in their historical application to Democratic politicians that they will not apply to their own politicians.
Donald Trump’s instincts as POTUS in relation to his fellow Americans
Are exactly the same as those as his grandfather Friedrich Drumpf had toward the vulnerable women employed in the brothels he established in Alaska and British Columbia – which were the source of Donald’s own wealth.
For Donald Trump,
Four kinds of Americans exist:
Those who work for him,
Those who support him,
Those who tolerate him, and
Those who oppose him.
For Donald, those who oppose him are not true Americans and he wants them removed from the United States.
(Unfortunately, what Donald wants Donald does)!
Big trouble looms ahead since he is far from alone.
Civil War is no longer just a possibility. It’s look more like a probability, every day.
p, four kinds of American’s exist:
Those who work for him,
Those who support him,
Those who tolerate him and
Those who oppose him.
For Donald Trump, those who oppose him are not true Americans and he want them removed from the United States. (Unfortunately, what Donald wants, Donald does).
So the future does not look promising. The possibility of a Second US Civil War occurring is rapidly becoming a probability.
Pompeo is also a private citizen. The speech was made during the evening on personal time. Good luck with your suit. TDS is a great acronym to describe Janine’s ailment.
He was out of the country on a diplomatic mission. Good luck arguing that that it’s “personal time.”
Pompeo was out of the country on a diplomatic mission. Good luck arguing that his speech was on his “personal time.”
When you go out of time on a business trip, do you bill each day as 24 hours or just 8 hours? That’s what I thought. 8 hours belong to the company, the other 16 are personal. No difference here. Good luck arguing that in court. Way too much precedence going for my argument – NONE going for your argument, just a dislike of Trump.
Ok, Mr. Westlaw: cite some precedent or something.
Because the way I see it, the Secretary of State when out of the country on official business, he’s on duty. And even if he isn’t on duty at the moment of the speech, the time spent planning it and the infrastructure used to transmit it were State Department resources.
When you go out of town on a business trip, do you bill each day as 24 hours or just 8 hours? That’s what I thought. 8 hours belong to the company, the other 16 are personal. No difference here. Good luck arguing that in court. Way too much precedence going for my argument – NONE going for your argument, just a dislike of Trump.
Like a boy who cried wolf, manufactured hype about russiagate and ukrainegate impeachment took all of the credibility from corporate media so now they don’t bother hyping even when there is a reason to.
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