In that long long first press conference of Spicer, most of the attention went to the crowd count question. But embedded in all the verbiage was a far more interesting sequence, almost a monologue by Spicer in which he does something rather unusual for a press secretary: speaks from the heart.
Or seemingly from the heart. Continue reading →
Right now I don’t have several free hours to take on the task of trying to sort out the confusion in this story, as evidence by the first three headlines listed at Memeorandum:
—From the WaPo: “The State Department’s entire management team just resigned.”
—From Talking Points Memo: “Report: Entire State Department Management Team Fired By Trump Admin.”
“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” David Wade, State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told the newspaper. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”
—From CNN: “Trump administration asks top State Department officials to leave.”
Legal Insurrection’s Mary Chastain writes:
No one knows for sure if Kennedy left on his own or if someone pushed him out. He had taken on the responsibility to help the transition to the Trump administration. Him leaving surprised many in the department. One officials told the Post that all of those people “had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.”
But Ambassador Richard Boucher, a former State Department spokesman under Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, said that usually the old team stays put to help the new team transition smoothly. He cannot believe these people left such important positions unmanned…
And at Hot Air, John Sexton writes:
Patrick Kennedy was the person working behind the scenes to downgrade classified emails found on Hillary Clinton’s private server. When the first SECRET email turned up on Clinton’s server, Kennedy intervened three different times to ask the FBI to change its mind about the classification…
In addition to his role as fixer for Clinton at the State Department, Kennedy was ultimately responsible for decisions regarding security at the Benghazi consulate. The review board did not find Kennedy responsible for the decision to cut security, but chargé d’affaires Gregory Hicks testified he believed Kennedy should have been held at least partly responsible.
As far as I can see, we still don’t know the sequence of events.
We also still don’t know whether this matters or will have a positive or negative effect on State Department business. My guess? Positive.
[NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to this Richard Thompson song.]
President Trump’s talk of voter fraud causing him to lose the 2016 popular vote has unleashed a storm of criticism with two main points. The first is that his accusation is undermining our democracy. The second is that his claim of a significant amount of illegal voting is absurd.
Let’s deal with the first issue first. It’s pretty clear why he’s talking about this. The media and the left have been busy little beavers trying to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency—and therefore our democracy— almost since Election Day (and the only reason they didn’t do much of it before he was elected is that they were certain he wouldn’t be elected).
“The Russians hacked the election!” was one favorite meme for quite a while. No proof was ever offered that releasing Hillary’s emails (the real accusation, not a “hacking” of the election) affected the election’s outcome. But that didn’t stop them from going on and on and on about it.
And lately we have the undermining of democracy (actually, the republic, to get technical about it) by the MSM and Democrats giving great significance to the fact that Trump “only” won the electoral vote and not the popular one. But of course the popular vote is irrelevant, because that’s not the way presidential elections are won, nor is the popular vote the vote that candidates campaign to win. But again, that didn’t stop Trump’s opponents from constantly talking about it.
Trump’s “well, the popular vote was hacked—by illegal voters” is therefore in the nature of a retaliatory attempt to undermine the significance of his loss of the popular vote. He obviously feels the need to keep striking back at the memes that undermine his victory and his validity as president.
That brings us to the second issue—the actual content of his claim. Is it absurd? I contend that we really don’t know. I’ll go on record right now as saying that I actually don’t think that there were enough illegal votes to account for Hillary Clinton’s margin in the popular vote. But you know what? That’s just my best guess. I don’t know, you don’t know, Trump doesn’t know. And all the journalists stating that Trump’s claim is absurd? Why, they don’t know.
Have you ever heard people say, “I can always tell when someone’s wearing a hairpiece”? No. You can always tell when you can tell—in other words, when it’s obvious. How would you know about all the people with undetectable hairpieces who might be passing by looking perfectly normal? The point of a hairpiece is to be unnoticeable.
As Powerline’s John Hinderaker points out:
Here in Minnesota, there is no possible way for anyone to know how much voter fraud occurred last November. Minnesota is a same-day registration state, and more than 500,000 voters register on the day of a presidential election…
Voter fraud is concentrated among same-day registrants, and nearly all illegal ballots are cast for Democrats. Hillary Clinton reportedly won Minnesota by around 45,000 votes. This means that if 10% of those who same-day registered also voted illegally (non-citizens, convicted felons, already voted in another state, etc.), Donald Trump probably carried the state. But the result can’t be changed because Minnesota doesn’t have provisional voting. The votes of the 500,000 to 600,000 people who registered on election day have been counted.
Do I think it is likely that Trump carried Minnesota? No. But we probably will never know, and we certainly don’t know now. Trump’s investigation into voter fraud is long overdue.
Well, there have been studies before (although I have no idea whether any have dealt with Minnesota). They haven’t found anything significant in terms of voter fraud. I’ve read many such reports over the years, and I remain unconvinced that we know to what extent fraud is happening (see this for one look at the problem).
Trump has another agenda in making his claim, and it has less to do with the past and more to do with the future. And, since he will probably get the chance to appoint a great many federal judges, this agenda has a chance of being upheld in the courts in a way that it hasn’t in the past:
In back-to-back tweets on Wednesday, Trump said the investigation would cover “those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal” and “those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).”
News outlets reported Wednesday that Trump’s daughter Tiffany, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin were all registered to vote in two states.
“Depending on results,” Trump added in his tweet, “we will strengthen up voting procedures.”
Former Justice spokesman Matthew Miller said this is exactly the fear of voting rights advocates – that such an investigation will be used to endorse more-restrictive voting laws. “That’s where this is going,” Miller said.
It may indeed be where this is going.
[NOTE: By the way, what did Trump actually say about his winning the popular vote? The best I can come up with is a Tweet of his back in December:
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
But what happened recently to cause all the flurry during the last few days? I believe it was this report:
President Donald Trump asserted in a private meeting with congressional leaders Monday night that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election if 3 million to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally hadn’t voted.
Trump made the debunked claim, without offering any evidence, at a White House meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Did he say it? My guess is that he did, since it would have merely been a repetition of what he’d claimed more publicly a month earlier. But “a Democratic aide familiar with the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity” seems a bit shaky for a source.]
I was told by my host that they’re migrating me to a new, different, everything-better server some time this week. I think it may have happened in the wee hours of this morning, because the site was down for a few hours.
So, here’s my question: have you noticed the site loading any faster? (she asks hopefully).
Mary Tyler Moore has died at 80.
She had kept a very low profile in recent years. Diabetes (Moore was diagnosed at 33) can be a difficult taskmaster and exact a toll as time goes on.
Anyone of a certain age probably remembers Moore very well from her stints on TV, as Dick Van Dyke’s wife Laura and above all as the star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Most remember her very fondly indeed; the show dominated the airwaves for years. Light comedy was her forte, charm her middle name, and she managed to do it all with more than enough grit to avoid any hint of cloying sweetness.
RIP.
Boy, am I sick of this bigness-of-the-inaugural-crowd business.
But commenter “Hangtown Bob” has called my attention to a photo I just can’t resist spotlighting. It’s interesting on many levels—not just because of how it impacts on the burning question of inaugural crowd size, but because the technology of photographing crowds is so advanced and so detailed. I know, I know; they can see a hair on your nose from outer space, so why not this?
I can’t reproduce the photo on this blog, so you’ll have to go to CNN and fiddle around there with zooms and stuff, particularly way back near the end of the mall.
And unless there’s something I’m not getting, it proves that the crowd really was YUGE.
[NOTE: Oh, and by the way—the public seems to have liked Trump’s inaugural speech, and in particular his “America first” message.]
…has been roaring through lately, hasn’t it?
Let’s see—Trump has been president for less than a week. But as promised, there have been a lot of executive orders, and more are contemplated very soon:
President Trump plans to sign executive orders Wednesday enabling construction of his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and targeting cities where local leaders refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation, according to White House officials familiar with the decisions…
But discussions were ongoing Tuesday about just how far to go on some policies, in particular the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The 2012 initiative has given temporary protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in the United States as children…
Trump will also potentially bar for 30 days the issuance of U.S. visas to people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen ”” all Muslim-majority countries ”” until new visa procedures are developed. Residents from many of these places are already rarely granted U.S. visas. Trump may ask DHS and the director of national intelligence to evaluate whether immigrants are being adequately screened for potential terrorist ties.
That’s faster activity than I can recall from incoming presidents. But then again, they didn’t have quite as many important executive orders to reverse.
Here’s a tidbit of news further down in the article: “Mexican President Enrique Peé±a Nieto will visit the United States next week to meet with Trump.” I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
I’ve noticed, also, that Trump is looking more tired than usual. More bags under the eyes. Anyone else see that?
You might consider sending it to some frightened liberals you know, if you want to bring up the subject at all.
[Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.]
Funny Trump parody from The Netherlands:
Settling a dispute among alternative facts.
Today Britain’s highest court issued a ruling:
Prime Minister Theresa May must give parliament a vote before she can formally start Britain’s exit from the European Union, the UK Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, giving lawmakers who oppose her Brexit plans a shot at amending them.
A “straightforward” bill will now be rushed to parliament within days, the government said after the country’s highest judicial body decided May could not use executive powers known as “royal prerogative” to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and begin two years of divorce talks.
However, the judges did remove one major potential obstacle for the government, saying May did not need the approval of Britain’s devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before triggering Brexit…
May has said she intends to invoke Article 50 before the end of March but the ruling means the Brexit process is now open to scrutiny from lawmakers, the majority of whom had wanted to stay in the EU…
Those who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU said the vote on triggering Brexit should be a mere formality.
“Any attempt to delay the Brexit process … would be an unforgivable betrayal of the British people,” said Richard Tice, co-chairman of the Leave Means Leave campaign. “The Lords should also follow suit; any delay by them would ensure their abolition.”
It will be interesting to see whether this will happen quickly, or whether substantial roadblocks will be thrown up.
There’s been a ton of chatter and mockery about Kelly Conway’s use of the phrase “alternative facts” to describe Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s initial statements about attendance at the Trump inauguration. Here’s a piece at The Hill by Jennifer Calfas that states:
George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” is surging in popularity in the days since President Trump’s inauguration.
The iconic book, published nearly 70 years ago, is the sixth best-selling book on Amazon as of Tuesday morning.
Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway on Sunday defended the White House’s statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration by referring to it “alternative facts.”
She was referring to White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s insistence that Friday’s swearing-in was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” despite photos and videos showing that former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration clearly had a bigger crowd on the National Mall.
Many on social media compared “alternative facts” to the use of “doublethink,” a type of rhetoric in “1984” by which the government presents two contradictory facts as both true.
I checked the dateline on the article, and it was 01/24/17 08:47 AM EST—in other words, this morning. This means that it was a half a day subsequent to Spicer’s clarification of exactly what he meant when he said that about the large audience:
QUESTION: And do you stand by your statement that was the most watched inaugural —
SPICER: I think —
QUESTION: — address of the —
SPICER: Sure, it was the most watched inaugural. When you look at — look, you look at just the one network alone got 16.9 million people online. Another couple of the networks there were tens of million people that watched that online. Never mind the audience that was here, the 31 million people watching it on television.
Combine that with the tens of million of people that watched it online, on a device. It’s unquestionable. I — I don’t — and I don’t see any numbers that — that dispute that when you add up attendance, viewership, total audience in terms(ph) of tablets, phones, on television. I’d love to see any information that proves that otherwise.
The WaPo transcript to which I linked is an interesting document. If you look at it, you’ll see two things. The first is that there were many other topics discussed at that press conference, mostly concerning what Trump has been doing in his first few days of office. But that’s not what social media is talking about. The second is that, as with Trump’s inaugural speech, the WaPo “helpfully” annotates the press conference, annotations that read like a continuation of an argument with Spicer rather than anything intended to elucidate. For example, in response to that quote of Spicer’s about adding up attendance—a quote that gives the lie to the meme that Spicer/Trump lied about this—the WaPo manages to grind out the following objection (this is the sum total of the commentary on the subject):
Spicer’s quote was that it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration ”” period ”” both in person and around the globe.”
He seems to be combining those two things, rather than saying it was also the biggest in-person crowd AND the biggest global crowd. If that’s what he meant initially, he probably should have said “combined” rather than “both.”
The WaPo’s objection is absurd. Yes indeed, “combined” probably would have been somewhat better and would have perhaps stopped the press from making its own reinterpretation of what he said, but to demand that level of precision in language is an obvious stretch, an attempt to avoid saying Spicer is making an excellent point. I think what he said and meant was fairly clear, as evidenced by his use of the word “witnessed” rather than “attended” (you’d use the latter for the live crowd), the word “audience” rather than “crowd,” as well as the phrase “both in person AND around the globe.”
Just call it a misunderstanding and move on. But the meme that Spicer was in the wrong is just too good to abandon.
And that Hill piece by Calfas is even worse, with its purposeful selection of which alternative facts to report and which to leave out. Calfas ignores Spicer’s elucidation entirely and pretends it didn’t happen. So will the real Orwellian please stand up?
And if sales of Orwell’s book have soared, perhaps it’s not just the left reading it in response to Conway. Maybe it’s the right in response to articles like Calfas’ and annotations in the WaPo.
So, what’s my own take on “alternative facts”? There are different sorts of facts. Two plus two equals four is a fact, and there is no alternative to it (although Orwell pointed out that if the Party wills it otherwise, some will believe it’s five).
But there are other kinds of facts. “How many people attended or watched the inauguration?” is a question. That question has an answer, but there are two problems with the answer. The first is possible confusion between the words “attended” and “watched,” because they mean two very different things and are measured in very different ways.
So the first problem is the definition of the question. The second is that there is no way to know the answer for sure. Crowd estimation is an art, and in the case of a crowd like that it’s based mostly on photos. Yesterday I quoted a crowd estimation expert (who was not from the Trump camp) who said that Trump didn’t have access to the photos that showed how relatively small the crowd was. So one could conclude that, although we don’t know the true size of the live crowd in DC, it was probably considerably smaller than at Obama’s inauguration, but that the Trump camp was using incomplete information about the live crowd.
That’s a case of alternative facts: using different photos to obtain your information. And of course it was compounded by a misinterpretation of his main point, in which the word “witness” did not mean “witness in person.”
“Alternative facts” are presented all the time, particularly in cases in which certainty is impossible. An excellent example is civilian deaths during a war (I wrote a lengthy post on the subject in 2007). Another is economic figures: income inequality and unemployment, just to name two favorites. How they are measured can make a world of difference.
Statistics can be used to prove almost anything, and they involve dueling “alternative facts.” This can be done maliciously and/or mendaciously, for propaganda purposes. Or—as Spicer rightly pointed out in his linked press conference—they can be the result of honest errors. They can also be the result of a bona fide disagreement on what is important and/or how to measure things.
To say that both sides don’t often choose among alternative facts is to deny reality. To pretend that alternative facts are Orwellian by definition is propaganda. They can be, but they often are not. But “alternative facts” was such a nifty phrase, so ripe for anti-Trump exploitation, that it could not be resisted.
[NOTE: This business of the WaPo annotating (supposedly fact-checking) the Spicer press conference got me to wondering whether this was done during the Obama administration. Of course, if it had been done, I highly doubt it was done in the same critical manner. But was it done at all, or is it an innovation just for Trump? Here’s Obama’s final press conference, back in mid-December—not annotated. However, shortly after the election Obama gave a press conference that was annotated.
But oh, what a difference in tone! Here’s a sample:
[OBAMA statement] We are indisputably in a stronger position today than we were when I came in eight years ago. Jobs have been growing for 73 straight months, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, the uninsured rate is at the lowest level on record, carbon emissions have come down without impinging on our growth, and so my instructions to my team are that we run through the tape, we make sure that we finish what we started, that we don’t let up in these last couple of months because my goal is on January 21, America’s in the strongest position possible and hopefully there’s an opportunity for the next president to build on that.
Number two, our work has also helped to stabilize the global economy and because there is one president at a time, I’ll spend this week reinforcing America’s support for the approaches that we’ve taken to promote economic growth and global security on a range of issues.
[WaPo annotation] Obama doesn’t want the whole Trump thing to overshadow his legacy too much.
Also, he seems to be making that case that he set Trump up to succeed ”“ with an economy on relatively solid footing.
That’s the sum total of what the WaPo has to say on the matter. I read all the annotations and couldn’t find a single one even mildly critical of Obama.
This made me curious to learn at what point the WaPo began these annotations. And that in turn led me to read some things that began a whole train of thought about this new practice of annotating transcripts. That’s a large enough topic to require another post, and I’m saving it for another day.]