Category: Politics

TRUMP RULE OF MENTAL HEALTH: IF HE LOOKS, ACTS & GOVERNS CRAZY, HE’S CRAZY

There is an intense and amusing battle raging in the psychiatric community over whether the president is nuts. Specifically the controversy is focused on whether it is ethical for a shrink to declare Donald Trump insane without having examined him. There is a growing plethora of practicing therapists who have publicly diagnosed The Donald as bonkers, albeit in more elegant and clinical prose. And they have all incurred the wrath of the American Psychiatric Association whose rules prohibit members from publicly diagnosing political figures unless they have examined them and obtained their permission to release the findings.

This is known as the “Goldwater Rule”, and it evolved from a controversial psychiatric survey taken during the 1964 presidential campaign between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson. A magazine polled more than 2,000 psychiatrists and a majority said the Republican senator from Arizona lacked the mental stability to be president. After losing the election, Goldwater sued the magazine for libel and won. Years later, the psychiatric association adopted the rule now being invoked, without much success, to keep its members from commenting on Trump’s mental state.

Dr. Allen Frances, a psychiatrist at Duke University School of Medicine and an author of the standard manual on psychiatric disorders, wrote a letter to the New York Times defending the president against the insanity label lobbed at him by some of the doctor’s colleagues. He said the commander in chief lacks the “distress and impairment required to diagnose a mental illness.” Trump might have tweeted the good doctor’s endorsement, if not for the sentence that followed: “Nevertheless,” Frances wrote, “he can and should be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”

Thankfully, bloggers are not covered by the Goldwater Rule. That means I can go out on a limb and say publicly what most world leaders have to be thinking: President Donald J. Trump is batshit crazy.

Let’s count the ways:

• Turned the Nuclear Codes into a Facebook Moment. Since the start of the arms race, a military attaché, clutching a briefcase that can be used to launch nuclear missiles, has always been in close proximity to the commander in chief. All previous presidents have treated this sobering arrangement with well-deserved discretion. Not The Donald. He invited fellow diners at his Mar-a-Largo resort to pose with the “nuclear football” and its carrier for cute social media fodder.

• Thinks Frederick Douglas is Still Alive. Trump kicked off Black History Month with a lengthy monologue about how the “dishonest media” incorrectly reported that Martin Luther King’s bust had been removed from the Oval Office. Then, trying to think of other black people to mention, he gave a shout out to Douglas, saying the abolitionist who died 122 years ago “is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job.”

• Called for the Destruction of a Court that Ruled Against Him. Trump went to Nashville this week to deliver a carefully scripted speech in support of the Republican health insurance bill. Minutes before taking the stage, the president learned that his second attempt at an anti-immigration order had been blocked by a federal judge. So he jettisoned the insurance pitch and ranted about how he’d like to “break up” the Ninth Circuit.

• He Sees Some Holocausts as Better than Others. Asked what he learned in his first intelligence briefing, Trump said, a “nuclear holocaust would be like no other.”

• Declared Unconditional Love for Himself. In an interview with an ABC reporter, Trump said, “I don’t want to change . . . I can be the most presidential person ever, other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln, but I may not be able to do the job nearly as well if I do that.”

• Repeatedly Sticks his Foot in his Mouth. As his lawyers draft briefs supporting his second travel ban order on the basis that it substantially resolved legal objections in the original document, Trump grabs a microphone and says the new order is “just a watered down version” of the first one.

• Thinks he is the Least Racist Person Ever. Seconds after making that declaration during a news conference, Trump asked a black reporter if she could set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus since they must be her friends.

• Comes out of his Own Little World Just Long Enough to Create International Incidents. The Obama-wiretapped-me fantasy now seems destined to have a longer life than the Iraq War. By now, Trump’s belief that the former president electronically surveilled him has been repudiated by every major Republican leader in Congress and the head of the FBI. But being The Donald means never having to say you’re sorry, or wrong. He doubled down this week and suggested that British spies planted the bugs for Obama. The Brits were enraged, but Trump wouldn’t back off, insisting he heard it on Fox News so it must be right. Fox News quickly said there was no truth to the story, but Trump kept right on mumbling about it, and even tried to drag a mystified German Chancellor Angela Merkel into the fracas late last week.

And on and on the list grows. As New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted yesterday, the insanity of the Trump administration can be measured by the fact that the new secretary of the interior rode to work on a horse named Tonto, and nobody paid much attention. Somewhere, in some afterlife, a bemused, and oh-so-very sane, Barry Goldwater is shaking his head and muttering, “And they called me crazy!”

PRESIDENT NARCISSUS: NOBODY LOVES TRUMP LIKE TRUMP LOVES TRUMP

Donald Trump has inhabited the White House for less than two months, but he is already the most psychoanalyzed president in history. A Google search of “Trump narcissism” turns up 449,000 entries. Here is a quick sampling: “Coping with Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the White House”, “Donald Trump, Narcissist-In-Chief”, “Trump is an Extreme Narcissist, and it Only Gets Worse From Here”. There are scholarly treatises portraying Trump as a posterchild for narcissism. There are letters from psychiatrists suggesting that the president undergo immediate treatment for the personality disorder. There is a ponderous analysis of whether narcissism could lead to impeachment.

Diagnosing a mental disorder is far beyond the reaches of this blog. Yet, there is a piece of this Narcissus stuff that is politically compelling, particularly as it relates to predicting the future of the Trump Administration. It is that aspect of the phenomenon that I want to explore here.

Although narcissism at its extreme is a recognized mental disorder, Sigmund Freud originally used the term to describe a personality type. He saw narcissists as emotionally isolated, very distrustful, poor listeners, lacking in empathy, dependent on adulation of others and likely to react to perceived threats with rage.

However, Freud also noted, according to a paper written in 2000 by the noted psychoanalyst and anthropologist Michael Maccoby, that “people of this type impress others as being ‘personalities.’ They are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders, and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or damage the established state of affairs.”

Over the past 20 years, experts like Maccoby, and Sacramento psychologist Mark Ettensohn, have taken a close look at how narcissists perform as leaders. Despite their self-involvement, Ettensohn notes that narcissistic leaders can be very tuned in to what people are thinking or feeling, more so than their non-narcissistic counterparts. “Because narcissists spend so much time trying to manage deeply felt insecurities and trying to read other people for whether or not they’re liked,” Ettensohn said, “they tend to get pretty good at knowing what’s going on inside of others.”

Trump, more than any other player on the national political stage, picked up on the intensity of the dissatisfaction and frustration of a large segment of left-behind working class voters. They became his rally crowds, forming a perfect symbiotic relationship between those who wanted to pound the system to smithereens and the crazy, larger-than-life narcissist who spoke loudly and carried a large sledgehammer. Daniel Bober, a clinical psychiatry professor at Yale University School of Medicine, said narcissistic leaders project far more self-confidence than they have and “people tend to follow them because of that confidence.” Think about it: How many times, before and after the election, did we read comments like this one, from a Wisconsin woman quoted by the Washington Post?: “. . . he’s got this crazy character, he’s very flamboyant and irrational. (We) supported him not because of his character, but because he represented substantial change.”

The professionals who study the dynamics of narcissistic leaders have identified two key causes of their downfall, both well worth keeping in mind as we watch Trump in the days ahead. One of them, identified by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a business psychology professor at London’s University College, is that the seductive charisma of inflated promises burns off when they aren’t fulfilled. Losing the adulation of the masses is as frightening to a narcissist as a crucifix is to a vampire.

That kind of rain has just started to fall on Trump’s parade. The Washington Post reported yesterday that many of his true believers are mortified over his backing of a health care bill that would take away their insurance. It’s a classic breakdown between a narcissist’s grandiose promise and the disappointment of his followers who believed in them. After all, it was just a month ago when his fans cheered the president’s words: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. (You) can expect to have great health care. Much less expensive and much better.” Earlier this week, Trump threw his support behind the House Republican plan that will leave an estimated 24 million Americans without insurance, including many hard core Trump backers who would lose their Medicaid coverage.

Maccoby, the psychoanalyst and anthropologist who has written extensively about narcissistic leaders, says they can succeed for the long haul only if they have an effective lieutenant by their side, helping them avoid the most destructive behavior. In Trump’s case, that would include taking control of the Twitter account. Maccoby used the late Steve Jobs and Apple as an example. Jobs’ narcissistic style got him fired when he tried to run the company by himself. He later succeeded, Maccoby noted, when he came back and partnered with Tim Cook in operations and Jony Ive in design. Maccoby also said Napoleon fit the narcissistic mold and was functioning quite well until he discharged his close adviser, Talleyrand, leading to Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia since there was no one there to talk him out of it.

If Maccoby’s theory that narcissists can succeed only with the wise guidance of an able assistant, Trump is doomed. After all, Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist and bomb thrower, was writing racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic screeds for a far right wing website before he ended up in the west wing. Nobody else on the White House staff has yet shown any promise at being able to save Trump from Trump. If the psychological experts are right, the drama of the Trump presidency will grow even more dark and dreary in the days to come. As his fans grow disillusioned and withhold their love, the president will respond with more rage, furor and desperation. And there seems to be no adult in sight capable of holding him back. That means only one thing: the ending of this reality show is not likely to be pretty.

THE TRAGEDY OF TRUMP: WINNING AN ELECTION DOESN’T CREATE AN ABILITY TO SERVE

This country’s 45th presidency is unfolding like a Shakespearian tragedy. The protagonist, King Donald, is so consumed with proving the legitimacy of his throne that he unleashes one stunt after another, each more bizarre than the last, all designed to prove himself worthy of his title. The dramatic irony, of course, is that the more the king does to create the illusion of legitimacy, the less legitimate he appears.

This diabolical storyline developed its rich texture from the backstory of the prequel, last year’s general election. Remember the third and final presidential debate when The Donald, then behind in the polls, declared that he might not accept the election results? The rarely stunned New York Times called Trump’s position “a remarkable statement that seemed to cast doubt on American democracy.” In a classic plot twist, Trump won, but his self-sowed seeds of doubt over the vote tally invaded his own psyche, haunting him like a Dickensian ghost. Hilary Clinton conceded to Trump. The Electoral College certified his election. The chief justice of the Supreme Court administered his oath of office. Throughout all of those rituals, King Donald remained angry and on edge. He was holding an “illegitimate election” card that he never had to play. His unshakable dread was that it would now be played against himself.

Nearly two months into his presidency, Trump remains paralyzed over his fear of not being seen as legitimate, despite the absence of any serious and credible challenge to the election results. He spent the first 48 hours in the White House telling foolish lies about the size of his inaugural audience. Then, out of the blue and without a scintilla of evidence, he insisted that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for rampant election fraud. And then came the Russian stuff. Intelligence agencies said there was evidence that Russian spies interfered with the election in an effort to help Trump win. While the rest of the country saw that as a serious threat to our democracy, the new president imploded over the notion that he didn’t win the election on his own merit. Tragically, this president’s neurotic obsession about looking like a winner has made him the biggest loser in White House history.

The fact that Donald Trump’s presidency is lacking legitimacy has nothing to do with vote counts or Russian espionage. A legitimate president doesn’t:

• Accuse his predecessor of wiretapping him, without a shred of evidence.
• Preach “America First” and then allow the Keystone Pipeline to be built with foreign steel.
• Criticize Arnold Schwarzenegger’s television ratings at the National Prayer Breakfast.
• Place a hold on what he considers an urgent national security program (Travel Ban 2.0) in order to bask in the afterglow of the only speech he has given without looking completely unhinged.
• Call the news media the “enemy of the American people.”
• Boast about the magnitude of his Electoral College win in a phone conversation with the Australian prime minister.
• Call people names like “neurotic dope”, “clueless incompetent”, “dumb as a rock”, “sick loser”, “obnoxious”, “dumb mouthpiece”, and “total disaster”. (Recipients of presidential wrath, in order of appearance: the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, the National Review’s Rich Lowry, CNN’s Don Lemon, George W. Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove, Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan, Sen. Lindsey Graham and former defense secretary Robert Gates.)

Now, add to that abbreviated list of highly un-presidential behavior, two recent episodes:

The Washington Post ran a compelling and amusing piece earlier this week that cataloged Trump’s history of staging outrageous stunts in order to divert media attention from his various messes. The article’s point was that the president’s wiretap tweet bomb was a calculated move designed to deflect attention from the Russians’ election tampering investigation and the attorney general’s recusal. As it turned out, the ruse had the design and execution of a fifth grader forging a parent’s signature on a permission slip. It produced four days of media speculation over whether the FBI might have persuaded an international court to authorize wiretaps on Trump associates based on evidence of collusion with a foreign government. It was a Keystone Cops diversion that ended up with an even deeper plunge into the Russian scandal it was created to deflect.

And then there is Trumpcare, or the lack thereof. The president spent the campaign ranting about the evils of the Affordable Care Act and how he would replace it immediately with “something wonderful”. Four days before he was inaugurated, Trump said there would soon be “insurance for everybody,” at much lower costs. House Republicans, who repealed Obamacare 725,000 times when it didn’t count, were chomping at the bit to see the new president’s plan. Turns out he didn’t have one. A week ago, The Donald had this to say on the subject: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” The Republican Congress , abandoning all hope of presidential leadership on this issue, put out its own miserly health care plan, one that would leave millions without coverage. Trump immediately tweeted his support. Yet, as soon as the bill took shots from all directions, he told people not to worry because everything is negotiable. The next day he backtracked after House GOP leaders told him they had very little room to move. The president is now prepared to go back on the rally circuit to churn up populist demand for a bill he clearly doesn’t understand.

In every way that counts, Donald J. Trump has failed to conduct himself with the honor, integrity, decency, empathy and intellectual vigor that form the soul of the presidency and give it legitimacy. It’s not about the popular vote or the Russian hacks. It’s about the human qualities this man lacks.

DON’T BUY TRUMP? THEN THERE’S A TON OF OTHER STUFF NOT TO BUY

In case you haven’t gotten the memo yet, these are trying political times. We walk on eggshells at any gathering where a contrary opinion could be lurking. Facebook friends are purged for their political views. Bridge players keep searching for something else to call a “trump card.” As if all that is not enough to sufficiently stress us out, we now move into full boycott mode. A cigar in this ideological climate is no longer just a cigar. It is a political statement, and before you blow its smoke, you need to know the leanings and campaign contributions of the company that made it.

With some products, this boycott stuff can get pretty confusing. Beer drinkers, for example, would be well advised to hire a fulltime researcher before ordering a brew. Yuengling has been off the bar for progressives since its billionaire owner endorsed Trump last summer. Trumpsters, on the other hand, went cold turkey on Budweiser after the company ran a Super Bowl commercial heralding the values of immigration. Tough news for liberals: it won’t be Miller Time for at least four years. Pete Coors, chairman of Miller Coors, not only endorsed Trump but held several fundraisers for him, a fact, of course, that also rules out Coors, Molson, Blue Moon and a half dozen of the company’s other labels.

If you are a beer-drinking Trump hater, you might consider switching to the hard stuff, specifically Glenfiddich Scotch. The Donald started a Glenfiddich boycott a number of years ago after the company that makes it named a Trump nemesis as “Scot of the Year.” The president claimed the Glenfiddich people “rigged” their Scot of the Year selection in retaliation for Trump for having exported his own whisky to Scotland. Needless to say, you won’t find any self-respecting progressives sipping from a glass of Trump Single Malt Scotch. If it were the only alcoholic beverage left on earth, AA membership would suddenly soar.

While the left was hit hard by Trump-linked beer, the right is struggling to find a good cup of conservative coffee. Starbucks incurred Trumpian wrath when it announced recently that it would hire 10,000 refugees. A boycott was launched immediately. Starbucks has also been hit from the left for having stores in Trump Tower. But the real coffee battles are coming from the right. They had already been boycotting Dunkin’ Donuts for removing “Merry Christmas” from their cups, and Caribou because an Islamic bank owns most of the company.

So far, as a liberal, I am personally fine with all of this. I’ve been sober for 37 years and, therefore, have no need to ascertain the ideology of the hops I no longer drink. I do, however, love my politically correct Starbucks, always purchased outside of Trump Tower. I also see the potential decaffeination of the Trump crowd as the most encouraging political development in more than a year.

But keeping up with all the boycotts can be complicated, and it doesn’t help that many of them fluctuate more than the stock market. In early February, for example, anti-Trump consumers were supposed to avoid shopping at Nordstrom because it carried Ivanka’s clothing line. Then the company announced it was not renewing her brand because it hadn’t been selling well. Throw in a well-publicized statement Nordstrom sent its immigrant employees praising their service, and you have the basis for an early morning presidential tweet blasting Nordstrom. You’d think Nordstrom’s would now be safe for liberal shoppers, but no dice. It still has a few Ivanka items from last season available online, so it remains on the left’s do-not-shop list. Nordstrom, and for slightly different reasons, Macy’s are currently being boycotted by both Trump supporters and resistors. Maybe that’s what the president meant when he said he would bring America together again.

If this sounds too confusing, there is an app for that, at least for liberals. It’s called, sensibly enough, “Boycott Trump,” and it is a pretty handy guide for avoiding such Trump-friendly places as: Applebee’s, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Buffalo Bills, Capitol One Bank, Cheetos (for reasons other than their orangeness), Chicago Cubs, Dr. Pepper, Ford, J. C Penney, Jell-O, Kanye West, McDonald’s, NASCAR, New England Patriots, Panasonic, Pepsi, Sears, and hundreds more.

There is, alas, one anti-Trump campaign I have not joined. There is a move to pressure Sirius XM Satellite Radio to shut down its conservative Patriot channel which carries programming from most of the big names in right wing broadcasting: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and the whole lineup of Breitbart characters. Although I agree that the racist “White Nationalism” spewed by these folks is vile, I also find the use of economic power to silence any media operation disdainful. Sirius has a liberal channel as a counterbalance called “Progress.” Should those opinions be booted off the air if conservatives can garner enough petition signatures?

A key ingredient of authoritarianism is silencing contrary thoughts. It is an approach to governing that has been more pronounced in our country since January 21 than it ever has been, at least in my lifetime. It is a far less than elegant move for the resistance to adopt a tactic we are resisting. So I will do my best to avoid Trump-friendly beverages, restaurants, football teams, banks and department stores, but I will pass on trying to shut down a radio station for broadcasting despicable content. A far better remedy for such speech is, as former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “more speech, not enforced silence.” That’s exactly what White Nationalism deserves from us: more speech. May we never stop talking about its despicable evil.

TRUMP WINS THE GEORGE WALLACE HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD

In kowtowing to the baser instincts of social conservativism, Donald Trump took another sledge hammer to basic human rights this week. With the stroke of a pen, he rescinded the federal government’s position that transgender students should be allowed to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity. For many on the right, still smarting over their smashing gay marriage defeat, this was some sort of bizarre solace, a token illusion that their revered life style of the 1950s is still in place. For Trump, who supported LGBT rights in a prior life, the move gave him a much needed fix of the fuel that keeps him going: adulation and worship by his base. Sad, isn’t it, that grown adults can feel so good by forcing kids who look, dress, act and feel like boys to use the girls’ restroom (and vice versa)?

Now if Trump had been the straight shooting, down-to-earth non-politician his rally crowds think he is, he would have said something like this: “Frankly, I couldn’t care less what bathroom people use. Caitlyn Jenner is a fantastic woman and a dear personal friend. I’ve told her she can use the Ladies’ Room of her choice at Mar-a-Lago anytime. But many of the wonderful people who voted for me really hate this whole transgender thing, and I just have to throw them a bone because they love me so much.”

He didn’t say that, of course. Instead, like the politicians he so despises, Trump put the oldest spin in the book on his latest human rights assault by declaring, “This is not a federal matter. This is for the states to decide.” Press Secretary Sean Spicer was ready with the talking point: “We believe this is a states’ rights issue.” They both uttered the words like they thought they had just come up with the idea.”

Quite the contrary. This 45th president, who fancies himself as an outsider with a mandate to drain the political swamp, tapped into an argument that is drenched in the swamp’s DNA, dating all the way back to 1776. Every politician who ever opposed human rights did so by wrapping themselves in the flag of “states’ rights.”

Shortly after the American Revolution, the founding fathers worked up a constitution. The original draft banned slavery in the new union of 13 colonies. Virginia, however, insisted that any prohibition on slave ownership by this neophyte federal government was a deal breaker. The slave ban was dropped and the states’ rights gambit was born. It has been a goiter on the body politic ever since, heralding a civil war, periodic threats of succession and an ongoing lame, clichéd excuse for withholding basic human rights.

It doesn’t matter whether the battle is over slavery, whites-only lunch counters, gay marriage or transgender bathroom use. Politicians on the national stage rarely come right out and rave about how cool it is to discriminate. “States’ rights” is their rhetorical stand-in for “discrimination.” It’s more noble sounding to pound your chest in support of the rights of states to run their own shows than it is to advocate against those seeking equality.

In his first inaugural speech as governor of Alabama in 1963, George Wallace brought the local house down with these words of inspiration, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” A year later, as a candidate for president, Wallace said the same thing with different words: “Integration is a matter to be decided by each state. The states must determine if they feel it is of benefit to both races.”

And the rest, as they say, is history. Blacks would still be drinking from segregated water fountains in Alabama, if they had to wait for the white folks there to see the benefit of integration. That is the essence of “states’ rights.” Congress took the states’ right to discriminate away from them in 1964 when it passed the Civil Rights Act and made equality a federal right.

Eight years later, Congress expanded that right by passing a law prohibiting educational institutions receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. That statute was the basis for the Obama administration’s advisory warning to schools that banning students from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity would constitute illegal discrimination.

Trump, in preparing for a presidential run in 2000, called for federal legislation to shield the LGBT community from discrimination. In his latest incarnation, however, the president trotted out the old, worn battle cry of states’ rights. That leaves transgender kids like Gavin Grimm, a Virginia teen, with the painful indignity of using a girl’s bathroom while looking every bit like a teenage boy straight out of central casting. That’s what it means to leave human rights decisions in the hands of the states.

The question of federal versus state control of human rights split the Democratic Party for years. Eventually, the party lost southern Democrats to the Republicans. The battle was just warming up in 1948 as the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia debated the merits of a federal civil rights law. A young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert H. Humphrey rose to the microphone to support the platform plank in a speech many historians view as one of the best examples of political oratory. Here’s what Humphrey told his fellow delegates:

“To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

That was 1948. It is now way past time for us to escape from that shadow, once and for all. We need that sunshine of human rights. We need it for everyone. And we need it now.

THE NEW JOURNALISM: ONE STEP OVER THE LINE OF DETACHMENT

The country’s new political climate has jarred some journalists into rethinking the whole ethical construct of impartiality. This introspection is long overdue. For many years, most media organizations have insisted that newsroom employees refrain from any political activity beyond private thoughts in order to guard against even an appearance of bias.

That meant, of course, that news staffers could not publicly voice political opinions, attend protest marches or campaign for candidates. Many news managements were such strict constructionists on this rule that they, in effect, demanded their charges take a vow of intellectual celibacy. If you think that is an exaggeration, I’d be glad to introduce you to two reporters who were once suspended for attending a Bruce Springsteen concert.

The principle behind this non-involvement ethic is rational and understandable. It’s execution, however, has been the subject of intense debate among journalists since the days of the linotype machine. There is general agreement that reporters need psychic and emotional distance between themselves and their scope of coverage. If you report on city hall, you can’t manage the mayor’s re-election campaign. Such a conflict skews interests and damages credibility. So how about a hockey writer who puts a school board candidate’s campaign sign on her lawn? No problem? Believe me, journalists have been disciplined for far less. It’s always been a question of where to draw the line. Thanks to the politics of Donald Trump, that line seems to be moving a bit.

Helene Cooper covers the Pentagon for the New York Times. She had an intensely personal reaction to Trump’s executive order banning refugees from certain countries. When Helene was a 13-year-old girl in Liberia, a military coup took over the government. One soldier shot her father. Another raped her mother. Over the next frantic weeks, Cooper’s mother did everything she could to get her family out of the country. Eventually, they found safety and a better life in America. The only reason I know that is because Cooper wrote about it in a first-person New York Times account. Days earlier, she wrote the Times’ initial report of Trump’s refugee ban. To be sure, Cooper’s moving, poignant personal story was no partisan political act. Yet, it offered compelling testimony in opposition to the president’s immigration position by a reporter who continues to be able to craft excellent news reports from Washington. The Times moved the line by running Cooper’s personal essay.

Jim Schachter is vice president for news at New York’s public radio station, WYNC. In a recent “On the Media” segment, he described his reaction when he learned his wife and daughters were going to participate in last month’s Women’s March. He told them he would not share their tweets or post their pictures on social media because “. . .you’re going to engage in an act of politics. . .that is anathema to me as a journalist.” The line seemed pretty clear to him. Then, a few days later, Trump issued his restrictions on refugee resettlement. Schachter said his “head was a mess” because his mother and mother-in-law were refugees from Nazi Germany. This wasn’t a “political matter,” he said, “this was a human rights matter.” Then he remembered that his wife and daughters had argued that the Women’s March was also a human right matter. Schachter moved the line.

That line between human involvement and journalistic detachment is apt to keep on moving throughout the Trump years because we are no longer dealing with arcane political issues. It’s one thing to keep your opinions to yourself on tax reform. It’s something else when basic human rights are being shredded.

Another force helping to move the line comes from the newsroom presence of millennials, people of color and those with an LGBT orientation. Many young reporters seem more capable than their elders of elegantly balancing a strong set of beliefs with their journalistic skillsets. They, along with those from marginalized groups, see the fight for equality with the same passion they have for pursuing truth through their journalism.

Shaya Tayefe Mohajer is a former Associated Press reporter and an Iranian-American. She recently wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review criticizing newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, for prohibiting reporters from participating in the Women’s March. While working for the AP, Mohajer said she followed the news service’s edict insisting that reporters “refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in a public forum . . .and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements.” Those rules, she noted, were originally written by white men who handed them down to the generations of white men who replaced them, and none of them ever had to worry about the lack of equality. No longer bound by AP’s rule, Mohajer said she went to the Women’s March “not just because I understand inequality to be real and would like to live to see its end, but also because I’m deeply grateful for my right as an American to peaceful protest, and I intend to use it to call for a basic tenet of journalism: fairness.”

The line between advocacy and news reporting should not be removed. A Washington Post political reporter is never going to circle the White House on a lunch break with a sign that says “Trump Sucks”, and then replace it with a notebook and attend the afternoon press briefing. Yet, it’s well past time to modify the line, to relax its rigidity. There has been talk of replacing reporters with robots, but it hasn’t happened yet. Until it does, they need to be treated like real people, complete with real beliefs. And, absent a direct conflict with their job, they should be allowed to stand up for those beliefs. With a government poised for an assault on human rights, speaking truth to power is everyone’s job, even if it means an end to the illusion of journalism’s intellectual celibacy.

A REPORTER’S CHALLENGE: HOW TO COVER TRUMP’S WAR ON TRUTH

Journalists are psychically wired to, at all costs, avoid being part of the stories they report. That’s why covering the Trump administration must be agonizing for them. The president has called reporters the “most dishonest people in the world” and says he is in a “running war” with them. His chief strategist and alter ego, Stephen Bannon, referred to the press corps as the “opposition party” and said it should “keep its mouth shut.” It’s enough to make a reporter feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis, to borrow an old Tom Lehrer simile.

Trump’s choice of the word “war” to describe his relationship with the news media is, in a way, apt. Truth and war have always had a relationship. It’s been said that the first casualty of war is truth. In this case, truth is what started the war in the first place.

Much – on some days most – of what President Trump says is false, wholly lacking even a casual resemblance to objective truth. Reporters write and produce stories about the president’s lies, setting the record straight with clear documentation. Seems straightforward enough, right? The problem is the unavoidable optics: an unbiased news media repeatedly calling the president of the United States a liar. The White House response, of course, is always a doubling-down on the lie along with the obligatory attack on the “totally dishonest” news media. It’s now a continuous loop. Trump lies. The media call him on it and report the facts. Trump blasts the reporters and then tells more lies. Rinse and repeat.

If the previous paragraph had been written a year ago as a story line summary for a potential political novel, any literary agent would have said, “Don’t waste my time.” Facts, after all, speak for themselves. How preposterous to think a president would continue to lie after being proven wrong. How crazy to assume that anyone would still believe him. That kind of rational, real world thinking went out the window last November when America elected as its 45th president a man who broke all campaign fact-checking records for uttering completely untruthful statements. Turns out he was just getting started. The first few weeks of his presidency has produced a steady stream of totally false utterances.

This has created, awkwardly, a new normalcy for journalists. Prior to Trump, it was unheard of for a news outlet to routinely contradict a president’s assertions. Politicians, of course, have frequently accused each other of lying, but reporters operated above such partisan fray, presenting the facts and the arguments of both sides, and letting their readers or viewers draw their own conclusions. Those were the days, of course, when reasonable people would offer credible alternative spins on the same set of facts. This White House has introduced us to “alternative facts,” representations that are simply wrong. That has led to, as Dan Barry of the New York Times noted recently, straight news stories that use adverbs like “falsely” or “wrongly” in framing what President Trump said. Other news outlets have frequently peppered their Trump reporting with these phrases: “with no evidence,” “won’t provide proof,” “unverified claims,” or “repeating debunked claims.” This has never happened before in the history of political journalism.

The uniqueness that is Donald Trump forced the news media to make a Hobson’s choice: just report what Trump says and let others call it a lie, or label clearly false presidential statements as inaccurate and stand accused of being the “opposition party.” Most major news outlets made the right choice. If Trump says, as a recent New York Times headline put it, “Up is Down,” reporters now routinely include a notation in their story that, in this case, up is actually up and that the president’s declaration that up is down is false. For example, the Chicago Tribune reported that Trump was wrong when he said two people were shot and killed during former president Obama’s farewell address in that city. According to police records, there were no shootings that evening. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Trump’s comment that the city’s murder rate was “terribly increasing,” and then reported that he was absolutely wrong and that the murder rate has steadily declined over the past decade. The Washington Post, which developed an app that quickly fact-checks the president’s Twitter messages, identified 24 false or misleading statements Trump made during his first seven days in office.

As a former reporter, I totally get how difficult this transition must have been for journalists. These are people deeply committed to fairly and accurately reporting the news, free from any taint of partisanship. Trump, however, demands a game change. There has never been a president with such a propensity to make things up on the spot, believe them, and then keep repeating them. In a world like that, reporting a president’s statements that you know to be false, without labeling them as such, removes all semblance of truth-telling from journalism.

One encouraging sign in this bizarre “alternative facts” era is that many people have a hunger for the truth. Most major news operations have experienced dramatic increases in subscribers and viewers since the election. This is counter to the normal cycle of news consumption which typically peaks immediately after an election and then tapers off. Yet, the Columbia Journalism Review reports that the New York Times has been signing up to 10,000 new subscribers a day since the election. The Washington Post’s readership has increased significantly. The Los Angeles Times has had a 60 percent subscription increase. Similarly, cable and network news programs are experiencing record ratings. The moral of the story is simple. It is not easy being a news reporter in Donald Trump’s America, but for those of us who want to know the truth, there is no more important job right now.

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY: NOT NEARLY AS FUN AS THE CAMPAIGN RALLIES

The Trumpian savior narrative that, against all odds and common sense, propelled The Donald into the White House is quickly devolving into that “Wizard of Oz” scene when the purportedly all-powerful wizard turns out to be nothing more than an impotent old man barking orders in a gruff voice. Trump, who boasted throughout his campaign that “I alone” can fix the country’s problems, reached the end of his Yellow Brick Road this week when three federal appellate judges pulled back the Oz curtain to tell the president that the office does not come with absolute powers of wizardry.

Trump, boasting that he is a man of action, moved quickly to block travel into the U.S. from seven Muslim majority countries, causing colossal confusion and disarray at airports throughout the world. Earlier this week, James L. Robart, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush, lifted Trump’s ban by granting two states and a host of supporters a temporary restraining order. A dismayed Trump, shocked that anyone in a robe would second guess him, let it rip on Twitter, calling Robart a “so-called judge” and insisting that his “ridiculous” opinion would be overturned. Two days later, however, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth District Circuit Court of Appeals, upheld the injunction and rejected the Trump administration’s position that the president’s order was unreviewable.

That was quite a jolt for Trump and his fans. The entire premise of his candidacy and presidency has been that the guy, in his magnificent omnipotence, would singlehandedly drain the swamp and blow things up because . . .well, because nobody else can. “Believe me,” Trump repeatedly preached during his campaign, “it’s going to be great.” The lesson here is that in government, as in theology, belief alone is never sufficient. Process matters.

And therein lies the problem. Trump is not a process kind of guy. He made it all sound so simple during his rallies: “Build the Wall;” “Close the Borders”; “Ban the Muslims.” His crowds loved all of the hits and begged for more. “Lock Her Up” never failed to bring the faithful to their feet, waving lighters in the darkness, as if Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had finally launched into “Born to Run.”

I suspect Trump is longing for those glory days, the rallies, the slogans and, most importantly, the adulation from fans genuflecting every time he said “believe me.” Now he has to make those slogans come to life in a governance structure he shares with two co-equal partners, Congress and the judiciary. He hasn’t figured out yet that bullying both of them on Twitter is probably not the best way to advance his program.

Obviously, power sharing and collaboration are not in this president’s vocabulary or life experience. The open question is whether he will learn from his mistakes. There is a good chance, for example, that Trump could have succeeded with his executive order, had he thoroughly vetted it with agency, congressional and legal authorities well versed with immigration law. Instead, it was hastily thrown together by inexperienced staffers so Trump could fulfill his self-image of a “man of action,” quickly giving life to one of his campaign slogans. He may eventually prevail in this legal battle, but for now the ban is not in place and the people he wants to keep out of the country are free to come on in. That’s a far cry from those “believe me” campaign rallies.

And it’s not just immigration. A month ago, Trump said Obamacare would be repealed and replaced in January. “We’re all set to go, right down to the final strokes,” he said. Two days ago, the president acknowledged that a replacement plan might not be ready until 2018. He insisted that his “big, beautiful wall” would be built immediately and paid for by Mexico. Reuters reported this week that a Homeland Security study estimates the wall will cost $21.6 billion and take 3.5 years to build. There is no rush in Congress to appropriate the money that Mexico refuses to put up. The wall remains more an instrument of metaphor than architecture.

Remember back in the campaign when Trump characterized all of his opponents as having some sort of congenital weakness, leaving him as the only strong man who can stand up to all of the world leaders and not be pushed around? His rally crowds swooned over their candidate’s ability to tell anyone what he thinks of them. Venting, it turns out, is not an effective strategy. Trump so angered Mexico’s president over the pay-for-wall business that he canceled a scheduled White House visit. Then he ripped into the Australian prime minister in a courtesy introductory phone chat and proceeded to brag about his electoral vote margin. Contrary to his campaign rhetoric about how he was going to all by himself, take on China, President Trump ended up backing down in his first phone conversation with China President Xi Jinping yesterday. Analysts immediately declared that Trump lost his first fight with China. Weak.

In other words, there is a world of difference between campaign illusions and actual accomplishments. Leaders – of a student council or a country – ignore process at their peril. If Trump really thought he was going to ram his rally hits into national policy by the strength of his will alone, he was badly mistaken. With a Republican Congress, he ought to be able to accomplish much of his agenda if he reaches out to lawmakers, listens to advice from people who know how the swamp operates, and treats adversaries with respect. Of course, if he did all that he wouldn’t be Trump.

So far, this much is comforting: the roadblocks Trump has encountered on his “I alone” march show the wisdom of the checks and balances baked into our system. Right now, they alone stand between us and tyranny.

HIDDEN FIGURES, ALTERNATIVE FACTS AND ANOTHER WEEK IN TRUMP LAND

The latest stupid alternative fact spit out by the netherworld of the racist right is that the compelling and award-winning film, “Hidden Figures” is a falsified piece of “politically correct” propaganda. A number of creepy websites, all to the right of Breitbart, are insisting that the untold story of three African American women who helped launch NASA’s space program in the 1960s is a total fabrication. (Here, here and here.)

One of the downsides of Internet technology is that crazy people have a platform. The nuts, bigots and lunatics have been with us always. I used to work nights in a newsroom. People called with all sorts of idiotic story ideas, particularly after the bars closed. One man insisted he had proof that thousands of Jews were quietly moving into town and planned to take complete control of all financial institutions. Another guy was certain his backyard squirrels were wired by the Feds to monitor his conversations. It was no big deal. We just hung up on them. Now they all have websites. Including, no doubt, the squirrels.

It’s been that kind of week. There was a Muslim ban that the president said wasn’t a ban. Then Alternative Facts Queen Kellyanne Conway defended the ban by pointing to the “Bowling Green Massacre”, only to find out later that there never was such a massacre. And now we have the white power nuts totally outraged over the notion that the white men launched into space 50 years ago might have had some support on the ground from black women.

I saw “Hidden Figures” on Inauguration Day. It was a wonderful, uplifting diversion from the installation of a president whose campaign was fueled, at least in part, by a longing for the good old days of white male privilege. The film was made from Margot Lee Shetterly’s book with the same name. Both were based on the following established facts: Prior to the days of IBM and Apple, the calculations for space exploration were done by mathematicians and their slide rules and adding machines. In NASA’s facilities in Langley, Virginia, these folks were called computers. During those Jim Crow days in Langley, there was a “Computer East” for white employees and a “Computer West” for blacks. The film tells the story of three female computers from the west group: Katherine Johnson, (Taraji P. Hensen), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). Their work, and particularly the genius-level mathematical skills of Hensen’s character, Katherine, played a vital role in a number of NASA’s most spectacular achievements, including John Glenn’s orbit of the earth in 1962.

In many ways, the story was as sad as it was compelling. Those women persevered through the abhorrently oppressive conditions of segregation. Yet, thanks to their spirit and incredible skill, they made it possible for a very white America to achieve greatness in space. The depressingly sad part of the story is that it took more than 50 years for it to be told. Of course, the racist webmasters point to that delay as evidence of fabrication. It was well known, they say, that the space agency was all white in the 1960s and that “Hidden Figures” is simply an attempt to erase white history.

Actually, the racists were partly right. The space program, according to Smithsonian research, was lily white back in the late 1930s and very early 1940s. But, thanks to pressure from civil rights leaders, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1941 demanding that the Langley operation and other federal agencies immediately open their doors to black employees. That was back in the day when presidential orders were based on inclusion instead of exclusion. Not only that, the star of it all, Katherine Johnson, is very much alive at 98 and continues to tell her own story. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former president Obama in 2015.

Of course, bigotry has always lurked in the shadows of the web. Sadly, it has now left those shadows and is performing on the main stage. The sites decrying the whitewash of “Hidden Figures,” are filled with posts of support and alignment with the Trump administration. For example, these pieces: “Trump Them Again – Use Executive Orders to Stem Creeping Bilingualism”; “Racketeering Refugees: What the Million Marching Pussyhatters Really Want”; and “Trump’s Wall Says to the World ‘This is OUR Country, We Decide Who Comes Here.’”

No, not every Trump voter is a racist. Yet it is undeniable that the right wing populism that propelled him, like similar movements around the world, was fueled by anger over changing demographics that have diluted the power of white privilege. Writer Zach Beauchamp, in a fascinating and well-researched piece for Vox.com, argued that the outcome of the 2016 presidential election had less to do with economic angst in the heartland and more with white antipathy toward a changing population. Wrote Beauchamp, “What unites far-right politicians and their supporters, on both sides of the Atlantic, is a set of regressive attitudes toward difference. Racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia — and not economic anxiety — are their calling cards.”

The challenge for those of us who believe that America’s greatness lies in those differences, in our embrace of diversity, is to draw a bright line for the battles to come. There can be room for compromise on health care, tax reform, education funding and the environment. But when it comes to matters of basic human rights, dignity, nondiscrimination and equal opportunity, there can be no retreat, no surrender. If we return to the days of Hidden Figures, America will not only have sacrificed its greatness, it will have lost its soul.

FREE MELANIA NOW!

In a sharp departure from previous posts, I rise today in defense of Trump. Wait a minute. Don’t leave me yet. I’m talking about Melania, not Donald. She’s being hammered by pundits and academics for a seeming reluctance to fully embrace her role as first lady. The Washington Post ran a story on the front of its Style section under the heading of “Where’s Melania?” After noting that she “cut an elegant figure” at the inaugural balls, the piece questioned why she hasn’t been seen since.

We are two weeks into the Trump presidency, the Post observed, and several key positions on the first lady’s staff have not yet been filled. Add to that the fact that Melania’s 37% favorability rating is the lowest ever recorded for a first lady, and we are left with the conclusion that something is seriously amiss here. Or so say the Post and its expert witnesses.

Melania made it known some time ago that she intended to remain in New York with the couple’s 10-year-old son so the kid could finish the school year. That’s a problem, says Rider University professor Myra Gutin. She told the Post that Americans are accustomed to seeing the first family together. “She could be giving the administration a little bit of a softer touch, because we do make certain decisions about a president based on his family,” Gutin said. “Ivanka and her family are there, but with Mrs. Trump and Mr. Trump’s younger son, it would be a different kind of feeling.”

Hogwash. First, there is nothing short of daily estrogen injections or a full frontal lobotomy that is going to soften this president’s image. Secondly, Melania and her son, Barron, are not props waiting to be dragged into photo opportunities. They are real people, entitled to lead their own lives, at their own choosing, in or out of the White House.

The first lady concept is an iconic throwback to the old, pre-feminist, economic architecture of American families. The husband ruled the roost and worked outside the home to pay the bills. The wife gave up any semblance of an outside life in order to stay home, cook, clean, manage the household and raise the children, all of which
she did without pay. Although most of the country has moved away from that model, there are those who want an exemption for the White House.

It’s time, way past time actually, to do away with the monarch imagery of the first family. The cultural restraints that made women mere appendages of their husbands were lifted decades ago. Somehow the White House never got the memo. If anyone is seriously hungering for a quick dose of 1950s familial gender roles, let them watch reruns of “Father Knows Best”. Leave Melania alone.

The poor woman immigrated from Slovenia in search of the American dream – provocative photo shoots and marriage to a billionaire. Through a bizarre and cruel twist of fate, the billionaire somehow got himself elected president. So now she’s relegated to a life of sipping tea with the wives of foreign leaders who’ve been insulted by her husband. Come on! That was never in the prenup.

America has been a complicit enabler of first lady spousal abuse for well over 200 years. As a result, many of them suffered depression and substance abuse. One of the victims, Margaret Taylor, prayed unsuccessfully that her husband, Zachary, would lose the 1848 election. When he didn’t, Margaret persuaded the couple’s daughter to play the part of first lady. Sound familiar?

Ellen Wilson said this about the depression she suffered during her husband, Woodrow’s, presidency: “I am naturally the most ambitious of women and life in the White House has no attractions for me.” Lady Bird Johnson succinctly summarized the role this way: “The first lady is, and always has been, an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband.”

Eleanor Roosevelt was so determined to avoid the traditional first lady role that she once threatened to divorce her husband, Franklin. The leverage worked and she continued leading her own life, writing newspaper columns and broadcasting radio programs. Eleanor’s position was quite clear: “There isn’t going to be any first lady,” she said. “There is just going to be plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt. . . I never wanted to be the president’s wife, and don’t want it now. You don’t quite believe me, do you? Very likely no one would – except possibly some woman who had the job.”

Because Washington is, above all else, a city rooted in self-interest, there are those nervously awaiting Melania’s first lady rollout in hopes that she can advance their cause. In a rare pre-election speech, Melania let be known that cyberbullying was something she would like to stop. In an instant, regardless of politics, nonprofits were salivating over the exposure a first lady could give their cause. Justin Patchin is co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. He told the Post that “Everyone is kind of looking around, saying ‘Who is she going to turn to?’ “She is a very public figure. At the very least she can bring this issue to further light.”

With all due respect to the very well intentioned cyberbullying lobby, the biggest contribution Melania could make to their cause is if she found a way to keep her husband’s small hands away from Twitter. It might well go down in history as one of the most significant achievements by a first lady. Other than that, let’s just let Melania be Melania.