The Commentariat -- June 2, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: "The payday loan industry, which is vilified for charging exorbitant interest rates on short-term loans that many Americans depend on, could soon be gutted by a set of rules that federal regulators plan to unveil on Thursday.... Under the guidelines from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the watchdog agency set up in the wake of 2010 banking legislation -- lenders will be required in many cases to verify their customers' income and to confirm that they can afford to repay the money they borrow. The number of times that people could roll over their loans into newer and pricier ones would be curtailed. The new guidelines do not need congressional or other approval to take effect, which could happen as soon as next year." CW: Take that, Debbie Wasserman Schultz!

Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times: "As more states adopt more restrictive laws and the number of clinics dwindles in the so-called 'abortion desert' -- an area that stretches from Florida to New Mexico and north into the Midwest -- women are increasingly traveling across state lines to avoid long waits for appointments and escape the legal barriers in their home states." -- CW

Nick Gass of Politico: "Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to reopen Trump University, the beleaguered real estate seminar business that is the target of multiple lawsuits and has become a new favorite attack line for Hillary Clinton. 'After the litigation is disposed of and the case won, I have instructed my execs to open Trump U(?), so much interest in it! I will be pres.' Trump tweeted Thursday.... 'Even though I have a very biased and unfair judge in the Trump U civil case in San Diego, I have thousands of great reviews & will win case!" Trump tweeted earlier Thursday." -- CW ...

... Nick Gass: "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped up his attacks on Donald Trump's Trump University business venture on Thursday, alleging the businessman and presumptive Republican nominee ran a thoroughly fraudulent enterprise.... 'It's fraud. This is just straight up fraud. It's like selling people something you say is a Mercedes and it turns out to be a Volkswagen," he said [on 'Morning Joe]. 'And even if some people say, "Well I actually kind of like the Volkswagen, it's still fraud, 'cause it's not a Mercedes. This is not a university.... You can't just put up a sign saying Scarborough Hospital, Scarborough University, Scarborough Law Firm.'" -- CW

*****

Sahil Kapur & Mike Dorning of Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama on Wednesday called for an increase in Social Security benefits for the elderly as he hit the road with a speech that previewed his role as campaigner-in-chief for Democrats ahead of the November election. The president's comments mark a reversal after he sought a bipartisan deal five years ago that would have cut Social Security and moves the Democratic party toward a unified stance on the nation's cornerstone retirement program. 'It is time we finally made Social Security more generous and increase the benefits so that today's retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they have earned,' Obama said in Elkhart, Indiana...":

... Allie Malloy, et al., of CNN: "... Obama lambasted what he said were economic myths peddled by the GOP, insisting any clear-eyed assessment shows the country better off now then when he took office.... During his hour-long remarks, Obama cast the upcoming general election as a choice between his own policies and those that would only benefit wealthy Americans.... Ahead of his remarks Wednesday, a White House source said Obama was chomping at the bit to get out and 'get people fired up' about the upcoming election, though the source conceded Obama will remain largely on the sidelines until the Democrats have a nominee. Obama expects to 'explode onto the scene' once the nominee is selected and 'knows his power' to fire up the Democratic base, the source said. 'It's driving him crazy' to be mostly hands-off, the source added." -- CW ...

Today, even as the top 1% is doing better than ever for all the reasons I talked about earlier, the Republican nominee for president's tax plan would give the top one-tenth of 1% a bigger tax cut than the 120 million American households at the bottom. It would explode our deficits by nearly $10tn. I'm not making this up. You can look at the math. That will not bring jobs back. That is not fighting for the American middle class.... That is not going to make your lives better, that will help people like him. That's the truth. -- Barack Obama, in Elkhart, Indiana, Wednesday

... The Guardian report, by David Smith, is here.

Jon Prior of Politico: "Federal regulators Thursday unveiled rules that could mean a death sentence for the payday-lending industry, a cause that has already sparked infighting between mainstream Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the party's Elizabeth Warren wing.... The debate has spawned bipartisan legislation backed by Wasserman Schultz to delay the new rules for two years, a move that she says would give states time to adopt stricter laws.... The legislation also invited a sharp rebuke from Warren, (D-Mass.), the architect of the CFPB." --safari

Nancy Scola of Politico: Congressional Republicans and Silicon Valley are racing to pass legislation to combat nuisance lawsuits against online speech -- before a litigious President Donald Trump gets a chance to veto it.... So the bill's supporters are pushing to get the legislation passed while Barack Obama is still president." -- CW ...

Blake, on the right, with a friend, not his wife.... Pajama Boy's Predicament. Eric Levitz of New York: Congressman Blake Farenthold of Texas once lamented the House's failure to impeach Barack Obama. As of 2013, Farenthold was still questioning the authenticity of the president's long-form birth certificate.... But now the right-wing representative is trying to pass a bill promoting free speech online before the illegitimate tyrant leaves office -- because he doesn't trust the great patriot he'll be voting for in November to support his conception of the First Amendment." -- CW

Molly Redden of the Guardian: "Five years into a wave of anti-abortion legislation that is without historical precedent..., a rising chorus of abortion providers and activists ... wonder if they are witnessing, as a direct result of those laws, a spike in women who are attempting to take matters into their own hands. In the south, abortion providers frequently encounter women who have tried taking misoprostol, an abortifacient that is only available in abortion clinics in the US but is available and inexpensive in most Mexican pharmacies. Myths circulate online about the ability of herbal extracts or over-the-counter products, some of which pose a health risk, to cause a miscarriage.... A report, released in November, project[ed] that anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 women of childbearing age in Texas -- the site of the nation's most bruising abortion fight -- have at some point attempted to induce their own abortions." -- CW

Weird News. John Cox of the Washington Post: "Bryan Whitman, a top Pentagon official who has worked at the Defense Department for more than two decades..., [has been] charged with three counts of misdemeanor theft" after he inexplicably targeted a nanny for legally parking in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Whitman first left her a threatening note, then removed her car's plates -- twice. CW: There's no suggestion in the story that Whitman knew the nanny. Sometimes older people just go nuts. Then again, the nanny is Hispanic. Donald Trump.

Presidential Race

Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton plans to deliver a scorching assessment of Donald J. Trump's foreign policy prescriptions on Thursday, casting her likely Republican rival as a threat to decades of bipartisan tenets of American diplomacy and declaring him unfit for the presidency. Mrs. Clinton's campaign aides said the speech, which she will deliver in San Diego, would be the start of a persistent assault to portray a potential Trump presidency as a dangerous proposition that would weaken American alliances and embolden enemies." CW: See also commentary by Fred Kaplan & by Norm Ornstein, linked below.

Louis Nelson of Politico: "Hillary Clinton unloaded Wednesday on Donald Trump and his Trump University... At a Newark, New Jersey, event, Clinton ... open[ed] her remarks by bringing up the most recent development in the Trump University lawsuit.... 'Trump and his employees took advantage of vulnerable Americans,' Clinton said.... 'This is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud. He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump U.... On issue after issue, we see someone who is unqualified and unfit to be president of the United States.' Clinton also attacked Trump for the months-long delay in the delivery of money to veterans charities from a fundraiser he held in January.... 'It turns out it wasn't until the press shamed him that he actually made the donations he had promised. For months, it was all just a publicity stunt.'" -- CW

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal judge ruled Wednesday that another batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails must be turned over to the Democratic presidential candidate's political adversaries in advance of the national political conventions this summer. U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Jackson ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development to produce a set of messages to the Republican National Committee by July 11 and to come up with a timeline by July 19 for disclosure of the remaining records." CW: Jackson is an Obama appointee.

Josh Gerstein: "Just as documents unsealed in a class-action lawsuit over ... Donald Trump's Trump University real estate program made a huge splash in the media, the judge who ordered the release of the information is trying to put some of it back under wraps.... On Tuesday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel ... said he had 'mistakenly' listed some records to be released in full, when they were actually supposed to be edited or redacted to delete personal information like home addresses and personal emails." -- CW

Scammer-in-Chief. Jonathan Chait: "... Trump University was a total scam.... He is running the same scam on the vastly larger and more consequential tableau of the presidential election. His ask this time is not for your money but your vote. But the proposition is the same: His capitalistic brilliance -- which is self-evident from his famous wealth, but the specifics of which must remain confidential as a trade secret -- will be put at your disposal. The campaign, like the 'university,' is a fraud designed to benefit Trump by exploiting the uneducated, the desperate, and the vulnerable." -- CW ...

Scammer-in-Chief, Ctd. Fighting News of Scam with Scam Video. Nick Penzenstadler of USA Today: "Donald Trump's campaign issued a video Wednesday featuring three people identified as former Trump University students that represent satisfied customers of that program, which has been a source of intense criticism and legal challenges.... The video features Kent Moyer, Casey Hoban and Michelle Gunn -- all of whom appear to have some ties to Trump himself." -- CW ...

... Trump College of Vulture Capitalism. Dana Milbank: Steven Brill of Time magazine reported last November that Trump claimed "that he started Trump University as a charitable venture." But somehow Trump never gave any of the $5 million he received from his "charitable venture" to any charities.... After the 2008 crash, "Trump was essentially teaching his pupils how to be vultures, profiting from the economic crash at a time when much of the national effort was devoted to limiting foreclosures.... By comparison, the veterans who waited four months to receive Trump's largesse did relatively well." -- CW ...

... David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: When Sean Hannity interviewed Donald Trump on Tuesday night about his charitable contributions to veterans, he "didn't say on air ... that he had a years-long relationship with one of the groups Trump had just chosen for a donation. The charity, Freedom Alliance, received a $75,000 gift.... Freedom Alliance provides college scholarships to the children of fallen or disabled U.S. military personnel. It also provides care packages to troops overseas and presents for military families at Christmas. It was founded by former Marine officer Oliver North, a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s who has become a conservative activist and commentator.... Freedom Alliance, based in Northern Virginia, receives only middling ratings from charity watchdog groups. Charity Navigator gives it two stars out of four. Charity Watch gives it a grade of "D.'" -- CW

** "Litigator-in-Chief." Nick Penzenstadler & Susan Page of USA Today: Donald Trump "and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades. They range from skirmishes with casino patrons to million-dollar real estate suits to personal defamation lawsuits. The sheer volume of lawsuits is unprecedented for a presidential nominee. No candidate of a major party has had anything approaching the number of Trump's courtroom entanglements. Just since he announced his candidacy a year ago, at least 70 new cases have been filed, about evenly divided between lawsuits filed by him and his companies and those filed against them." -- CW ...

... Jose DelReal & Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's highly personal, racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the Republican presidential candidate's vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence. That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.... Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for Trump, has expanded on the accusations of bias, wrongly suggesting Curiel is part of a group organizing protests at Trump rallies around California." -- CW ...

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "For Trump..., judging is all personal, at least as far as he is concerned. He has no discernible views on judges except about whether they agree with him, case by case. As illustrated by his attacks on Judge Curiel, Trump's style is bigoted name-calling, not reasoned critique. That's his pattern -- and not just about judges." -- CW

** Fred Kaplan of Slate: "It is no coincidence that two of the world's wiliest dictators -- Russia's Vladimir Putin and, now it seems, North Korea's Kim Jong-un -- are keen to see Donald Trump win this fall's election.... [It's] likely, Putin and Kim pine for a Trump presidency because they see he's an easy mark, someone who thinks he's smart and tough but who, in fact, is all set to give away the store.... [U.S. allies know] ... Trump would be a disaster for their interests and U.S. interests -- and a feast for our shrewdest adversaries." -- CW

** Norm Ornstein in Politico Magazine: "It is almost impossible to separate Donald Trump the presidential candidate from Donald Trump the businessman and huckster.... On Wednesday, Trump announced he will travel to Scotland on June 24 to preside over the grand reopening of Trump Turnberry, the luxury golf resort.... No matter that he is going on the same day that the United Kingdom will find out the results of its referendum on whether to stay in the European Union, potentially a transformative event for Britain and the world.... A presidential candidate is using his position for personal financial gain, at potentially great costs to U.S. foreign policy and international relations. And yet the news about Trump's Scotland trip barely caused a ripple. As Bob Dole famously said, 'Where's the outrage?'" ...

Huh? -- Donald Trump, response to a question about Brexit ...

... Trump doesn't know what "Brexit" is, but he's "for it."

CW: As a couple of contributors pointed out yesterday, Frank Rich's comparison of Ronald Duck & Donald Duck is an interesting read. The scariest part of "interesting" is Rich's well-reasoned contention that we're in serious danger of getting another President Duck, especially with the leading Democratic candidate being so Mondalesque.

Gail Collins: "Donald Trump has a simple reason for his long delay in explaining what happened to the money he raised for veterans' charities: He didn't want any publicity.... Of all conceivable explanations, 'too self-effacing' ranks somewhere below 'temporarily kidnapped by space aliens.'" CW: Everything he says is fake. ...

... Charles Blow: "Trump keeps signaling that if he had his druthers, he would silence dissent altogether.... Trump's dictatorial instinct to suppress what he deems 'negative' speech, particularly from the press, is the very thing the founders worried about." CW: Well, okay, maybe this is real.

Mark Brown of the Guardian: "He has not yet made a horse his running mate, but Donald Trump can be compared to one of the most notorious of all Roman emperors, Caligula, according to best-selling historian Tom Holland. Holland told the Hay festival there were fascinating parallels between the actions and success of Trump and what was going on in Rome 2,000 years ago." --safari

Steve DiMeglio of USA Today: "The PGA Tour announced Wednesday that the World Golf Championships event held at Trump National will move to Mexico City beginning next year. The event will be renamed the WGC-Mexico Championship after the Tour, on behalf of the International Federation of PGA Tours, secured a seven-year sponsorship agreement with Grupo Salinas, a collection of companies based in Mexico City.... Cadillac ended its sponsorship of the event this year. Doral has hosted a PGA Tour event since 1962." -- CW ...

They're moving it to Mexico City which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance. They're moving it to Mexico City. And I'm saying, you know, what's going on here? It is so sad when you look at what's going on with our country. -- Donald Trump, on Hannity, Tuesday

I have days where I think it's great. And then I have days where, if I come home -- and I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist -- but when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof. -- Donald Trump, ca. 1994, on his wife Marla Maples' career ...

... Gabriella Paiella of New York: "Last week, NBC republished a 2004 Dateline interview in which ... Donald Trump called pregnancy an 'inconvenience' to businesses. On Wednesday afternoon, ABC News turned the clock back to 1994 to bring us Trump's thoughts on wives who work. Spoiler: They're incredibly regressive. -- CW

Sen. Graham Regrets. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "A wave of prominent Republicans have announced their intention to skip the party's national convention in Cleveland this summer, the latest sign that Donald J. Trump ... continues to struggle in his effort to unite the party behind his candidacy. The list of those who have sent regrets includes governors and United States senators -- almost all facing tough re-election fights this year -- and lifelong party devotees who have attended every convention for decades. Some are renouncing their seats like conscientious objectors." -- CW

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Krugman: "Every time we have a presidential election, I (and many others) find ourselves marveling at the way much of the news media settles on a narrative, and holds to that narrative no matter how much evidence accumulates that it's wrong. In this campaign so far, the settled narrative is (1) American public full of rage at established figures (2) Hillary in trouble. Initially, actually, this was 'public fed up with Bush and Clinton dynasties', but had to be modified once it turned out that younger, fresher GOP establishment faces were equally hapless. But what if none of this is true?" -- CW ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post: "Suppose that [Trump's] tantrum about hostile media had come from Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz. Suppose that the revelations about questionable past business activities involved Marco Rubio. Better still, suppose that the candidate at the center of these controversies was Hillary Clinton -- and on top of it all, that there was reason to think she had lied and then acted, clumsily, to cover it up.... Whatever the explanation, the resulting double-standard doesn't serve the public well. One presidential candidate isn't getting the same scrutiny as the others. And it's the candidate who deserves scrutiny the most." -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

Frances Robles of the New York Times: "The youngest of the billionaire Koch brothers [-- William --] had a dream: to found a private high school where academically gifted students of all socioeconomic backgrounds would do hands-on projects and learn by solving problems. He poured more than $75 million into building the school, the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches. But on Friday, he fired the head of school and declined to renew the contracts of the athletic director and the football coach. The moves came after a sexual harassment complaint and an internal investigation into accusations of kickbacks, grade-changing, excessive spending and violations of the rules governing high school sports." CW: No, Donaldo, inheriting a pile of money does not make one capable of running anything.

Bryce Covert of Think Progress: "Putting the homeless in supportive housing, where they not only get a safe place to sleep but services that help them deal with any health or other issues, costs a lot up front. But San Francisco has found that once those in housing eventually get stabilized, it ends up costing less than it did to have them living on the streets or in shelters." -- CW

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "The gunman who killed a UCLA professor before committing suicide on campus Wednesday left behind a 'kill list' and is suspected in the shooting death of a woman in Minnesota, authorities said. Mainak Sarkar, 38, a former doctoral student and Minnesota resident, left a list at his home in that state that included the names of the woman, UCLA professor William Klug and a second professor who is safe, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday. Sarkar shot Klug multiple times in a small office in UCLA Engineering Building 4 before taking his own life, authorities said." -- CW

AP: "Tests show that Prince died of an opioid overdose, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday."

The Commentariat -- June 1, 2016

Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "The death rate in the United States rose last year for the first time in a decade, preliminary federal data show, a rare increase that was driven in part by more people dying from drug overdoses, suicide and Alzheimer's disease. The death rate from heart disease, long in decline, edged up slightly."

Nick Gass of Politico: "Contrary to the opinion of his former Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama does not think that ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden rendered a 'public service' by leaking thousands of classified national security documents in 2013. 'The president has had the opportunity to speak on this a number of times, and I think a careful review of his public comments would indicate that he does not,' White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday, a day after Holder appeared on a podcast and acknowledged the role that Snowden's disclosures played in fostering a public debate about the role of government in surveillance." -- CW

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it easier for landowners to challenge the decision of federal regulators that the use of property is restricted by the Clean Water Act. The justices ruled unanimously that property owners could file suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the agency's determination that their land contains 'waters of the United States' covered by the Clean Water Act...." -- CW

Lawrence Hurley of Reuters: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal asserting that the death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment filed by a Louisiana man convicted of fatally shooting his pregnant former girlfriend. Two of the eight justices, liberals Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said they would have accepted the case, repeating concerns about the death penalty's constitutionality they raised in a different case last year." -- CW

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will not wade into a dispute over employee benefits in the bankruptcy reorganization of the Trump Taj Mahal Hotel in Atlantic City. The justices offered no comment as they turned down a petition from a union local representing workers at the casino, who said federal law called for a bankruptcy judges to preserve union contracts guaranteeing pension and health benefits." Thus, the lower court's ruling in favor of the (former) Trump entity stands. -- CW

Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "More than 78 percent of Americans disapprove of Congress; nearly 65 percent say the country is on the wrong track; and upward of 47 percent of registered voters say they would consider a 'generic third-party nominee.' Together, that is a clear vote of no confidence in our political system...[Yet], the same people who disapprove of Congress will readily re-elect most members to the House and Senate, as they have in almost every election year in modern memory. The same Americans who say the country is on the wrong track also approve of President Obama's performance 50 percent to 45 percent...If anything, at least, we should avoid attributing this unusual election to a general anger." --safari

Presidential Race

Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Hillary Clinton on Tuesday rejected the idea that she instructed anyone at the State Department to keep quiet about her private email server, after an inspector general report released last week found that some staff were told to stay hush about the unusual set-up.... 'I certainly never instructed anyone to hide the fact I was using a personal email,' Clinton said, laughing toward the end of her sentence. 'It was obvious to hundreds of people, visible to the many people that I was emailing throughout the State Department and the rest of the federal government.' Clinton, whose campaign didn't cooperate with the inspector general investigation, also said no interview with the FBI for its investigation into her private email server has been scheduled yet." -- CW

Nolan McCaskill: "Bernie Sanders wrapped up a news conference Tuesday but didn't take a single question from the press. The Vermont senator spoke for roughly 10 minutes during what was billed by the campaign a health care press conference and featured remarks from industry professionals...." -- CW

Evan Halper & John Myers of the Los Angeles Times: "After carefully avoiding any involvement in the Democratic presidential primary, Gov. Jerry Brown dropped his neutrality -- and looked past his bitter history with the Clintons -- to endorse Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. In an open letter to Democrats and independents, Brown urged voters who do not want to see a Donald Trump presidency to stop the infighting and rally behind Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.... It may have been Bill Clinton who helped seal the deal. The former president spent an hour and a half with the governor in Sacramento last week...." -- CW

Well, I think the problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. He's bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating a million dollars himself. But it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting the money to veterans. Look, I'm glad he finally did, but I don't know that he should get much credit for that. -- Hillary Clinton, to CNN's Jake Tapper, Tuesday ...

... Maggie Haberman & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "A defensive Donald J. Trump angrily listed more than two dozen veterans' groups that he said had received $5.6 million thanks to his fund-raising and personal largess during a contentious news conference Tuesday in which he repeatedly railed against reporters who questioned him. Criticizing the news media at length, Mr. Trump demanded that journalists credit him for his act of charity and took umbrage at their scrutiny of his boasts and promises. In a heated, 40-minute appearance in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mr. Trump dismissed a CNN reporter as 'a real beauty' and an ABC reporter as 'a sleaze,' and said that if he was elected president, the American public could expect a similar dynamic in the White House briefing room." -- CW ...

... David Fahrenthold & Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "Trump blasted the news media -- in terms that were bitter, even for him -- for asking about how, and when, he was going to give this money away.... The donations Trump announced on Tuesday were related to a Jan. 28 fundraiser for veterans that he held in Des Moines, on a night when Trump skipped a GOP debate due to a feud with its host, Fox News. That night, Trump said he'd raised $6 million.... Trump said he would give $1 million of his own. After that, however, Trump became reluctant to release details about what had become of the money. At times, too, his staff gave out false information.... By law, nonprofit charities like Trump's foundation are not supposed to participate in political campaigns. At this event, however, Trump described the nonprofit's gifts at what was clearly a campaign event...." -- CW ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: Trump called "ABC News journalist Tom Llamas a 'sleaze.' When Llamas asked what made him a sleaze, Trump replied, 'You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well.' In a sense, this was the Donald's most honest answer of the afternoon: Any journalist who 'knows the facts well' is 'a sleaze' in Trump's eyes." -- CW ...

... safari note: And don't forget just the other day Rick Perry called out the media "snakes" for uncovering lies about GOP hero and American sniper Chris Kyle. The GOP can't handle the truth...

... Lisa de Moreas of Deadline: "Donald Trump singled out ABC News' Tom Llamas and, to a lesser degree, CNN's Jim Acosta during today's news conference about money the candidate had raised for veterans groups back in January. Trump called Llamas 'sleaze' and Acosta 'a real beauty,' respectively." -- CW ...

... CW: It should not be lost on Reality Chex readers that the two reporters Trump directly attacked Tuesday "happened to be" Hispanics. ...

... The Turtle is Right! Leah Barkoukis, at the Confederate toilet paper site, Town Hall: "Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reassured listeners that Donald Trump will not change the nature of the Republican Party...." ...

... Akhilleus: Quite right. Trump won't change the party. McConnell and the rest of the cynical, anti-American, anti-democratic calculators have already done that. Trump has merely watered the seeds they have sown. But it's a hoot to watch the Turtle Man pretend that he's still in charge. He's the Maginot Line of the Republican Party, and here come the Trump Panzers. Buh-bye, Mitchy ...

... Washington Post Editors: Donald Trump "suggested that recent political reporting is 'libelous' and therefore not protected by the First Amendment, and he continued his assault on the federal judge overseeing one of the lawsuits against Trump University. The threats and personal insults show little regard for democratic accountability, the legitimate role of a free press in a free society and the importance of an independent judiciary.... You can believe [Mitch] McConnell, who posits that Mr. Trump will allow himself to be reined in by his White House counsel. Or you can believe Mr. Trump, who is telling us frankly: Yes, it is going to be like this." -- CW ...

... Whiner-in-Chief, Ctd. Kevin Drum: "Trump pretty plainly tried to avoid making the personal $1 million contribution he promised at the time, and now he's outraged about being held accountable for this." -- CW ...

... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "How dare you look into my public promises and report on what you find! The job of the press is to make Donald Trump look good, and when the press fails at that, they should be ashamed of themselves!" -- CW ...

... Jose DelReal & David Fahrenthold: "One of the charities that Donald Trump selected to receive a donation from his veterans' fundraiser is a group with a rating of 'F' from CharityWatch, and has been criticized in the past for spending less than half of its incoming donations on programs that help veterans.... During his combative press conference, Trump said that all of the groups had been scrutinized.... The Better Business Bureau issued an 'alert' about the group in January, citing 'a pattern and high volume of complaints and customer reviews' that alleged customers received 'a high volume of what they consider to be harassing phone calls' from the group's solicitors.... An examination of the group's tax filings shows that the foundation spent just $2.4 million of its total $8 million budget on helping veterans directly in 2014." Earlier tax filings showed a similar pattern. -- CW ...

... Nora Kelly, in the Atlantic, wonders where Donald Trump sent all the money, including his own, he claims to have raised for veterans, a couple of days after he hijacked an event for veterans for his own self-aggrandizement. Very strange..."Donald Trump has a problem following through. He advocated for banning Muslims from U.S. soil, before qualifying all his policy proposals as 'a suggestion.' He campaigned on the premise he would self-fund his race, before deciding to raise money after all. So when news reports suggested Trump hadn't donated all $6 million he said he raised for veterans' groups at an event this past winter, the revelation seemed to follow his pattern...Trump repeatedly blamed the 'dishonest' and 'unfair' political press on Tuesday for misconstruing the donation process." ...

... Akhilleus: Drumpf knows all about dishonesty and unfairness. They constitute the core of his being. ...

... Reuters: "New York City is investigating Donald Trump's practice of closing down the public atrium in Trump Tower for presidential campaign events that are off limits to the public. In order to add more floors than zoning rules would otherwise allow, Trump ... agreed to create a two-story public atrium ... [in] the building. But security staff wearing Trump badges spent several hours shooing away a growing crowd of New Yorkers and tourists from the doors on Tuesday morning after Trump decided to hold a news conference in the atrium.... 'Department of Building inspectors will be investigating the allegations that the (public atrium) was closed contrary to the building owner's agreement with the city,' Joe Soldevere, a department spokesman, told Reuters on Tuesday." -- CW

Michael Barbaro & Steve Eder of the New York Times: "In blunt testimony revealed on Tuesday, former managers of Trump University, the for-profit school started by Donald J. Trump, portray it as an unscrupulous business that relied on high-pressure sales tactics, employed unqualified instructors, made deceptive claims and exploited vulnerable students willing to pay tens of thousands for Mr. Trump's insights." -- CW ...

... Elliot Spagat of the AP: "Trump University gave employees detailed instructions on how to entice people to enroll in its real estate seminars, from targeting people making at least $90,000 a year and choosing words of flattery that are most persuasive to picking music for the gatherings -- The O'Jays' 'For the Love of Money.' The 'playbooks' for the now-defunct business owned by Donald Trump ... were unsealed Tuesday in a class-action lawsuit by customers who say they were defrauded." -- CW ...

... Tom Hamburger & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump was personally involved in devising the marketing strategy for Trump University, even vetting potential ads, according to newly disclosed sworn testimony from the company's top executive...." -- CW

Josh Marshall of TPM: "The press routinely goes into paroxysms - often rightly so - about innuendos or phrasings that might in some way be racist or suggest racial animus. [In Donald Trump's attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the Trump 'University" case] we have it in the open, repeated and showing itself as basically Trump's first line of attack when he is in anyway threatened. That's infinitely more dangerous than most things that routinely focus all the media's attention.... Few cases show more vividly how dangerous a person Trump is." -- CW ...

... CW: I can easily imagine President Trump's repeatedly insisting that Justice Sonia Sotomayor recuse herself from hearing any cases in which the administration is a litigant because she's "hostile," "a hater" and "a total disgrace," who "happens to be Puerto Rican." And I wouldn't put it past him to do the same to the justices who "happen to be Jewish."

... New York Times Editors: "When Mr. Trump complains that he is 'getting railroaded' by a 'rigged' legal system, he is saying in effect that an entire branch of government is corrupt. The special danger of comments like these -- however off the cuff they may sound -- is that they embolden Mr. Trump's many followers to feel, and act, the same way.... Mr. Trump's statements go beyond the merely provocative or absurd and instead represent a threat to America's carefully balanced political system." -- CW

Is It #RealDonaldDrumpf or Is It Real Dementia? Sophia McClennen in Salon (April 25): "We have become so accustomed to [Donald Trump's] ramblings that we don't really register them as anything more than standard nonsensical Trump-speak -- a pattern of speech we have seen crop up across the GOP in recent years, most notably in [Sarah] Palin's gibberish .... the odd syntax, the abrupt shift in topic, the disconnect from reality, the paranoia, and the seeming inability to even grasp the question.... What if it's an example of someone who doesn't have full command of his faculties?... At times it can be very hard to distinguish between extreme right-wing politics and symptoms of dementia." Read on. Thanks to Patrick for the link. -- CW

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "It's easy to mock Trump for denying reality. But in truth, he is hardly a pioneer in the postmodernist political effort to create parallel universes of facts. For years the right-wing commentariat has deliberately dismantled public trust in major U.S. institutions, including government and the 'mainstream media.'... In discrediting any rival and possibly neutral arbiter of truth and accountability -- that is, entitling himself to his own facts as well as his own opinions -- Trump ... frees himself up to invent colorful problems, conspiracies and villains that only a President Trump can defeat. And second, he robs the public of any independent means of assessing whether he's ever actually succeeded." -- CW

All Aboard the Drumpf Train. Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Donald Trump's friendly but fierce Alabama ally, has a message for Republicans still queasy about their party's nominee: Tide's about to roll over you. Sessions... thinks Trump is more a movement than a man." --safari ...

...**David Alpher of the blog The Conversation: "In the late stages of the GOP primary as the rhetoric became increasingly xenophobic, they were applied to increasingly broad swaths of the American population as well. Years of constant repetition by members of the GOP have given them an appearance of legitimacy.... Right-wing extremist groups use them as well, and to very specific ends: to define the conditions under which antigovernment violence becomes legitimate in their worldview. I have seen rhetoric like this used to mobilize violence in countries like Iraq and Kenya. This same dynamic, I argue, is taking shape within American society now. If it continues, it represents a greater threat than anything we face from terrorist groups outside our own borders." --safari

David Ignatius of the Washington Post: Donald Trump's "policies would play into China's narrative about the world -- and undermine the foundations of U.S. power in Asia, even as they are bolstering a rising China." -- CW

JH Ahn in the Guardian: "North Korean state media has praised ... Donald Trump, describing him as a 'wise politician' and 'far-sighted candidate' who could help unify the Korean peninsula...'This is very striking,' said Aidan Foster-Carter of the University of Leeds.' Admittedly it is not exactly Pyongyang speaking, or at least not the DPRK government in an official capacity. But it is certainly Pyongyang flying a kite, or testing the waters. For the rest of us, this is a timely reminder -- if it were needed -- of just how completely Trump plans to tear up established US policy in the region.'" --safari

Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. Hadas Gold of Politico: "Satellite radio company SiriusXM has suspended Glenn Beck's syndicated show this week and is 'evaluating' the program's place over comments made last week by one of Beck's guests. Last week, fiction writer Brad Thor appeared on Beck's program and suggested GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was a danger to America and that citizens would have to take means that may not be legal in order to get Trump out of office. Beck did not immediately admonish or distance himself from the comments, leading to the suspension by SiriusXM." -- CW

Congressional Race/Weird News

Marc Caputo of Politico: "One of Dena Minning's biggest assets in her congressional bid was her boyfriend: incumbent Alan Grayson, who's leaving the U.S. House to run for U.S. Senate. Now, after Grayson has helped raise her profile and run for his U.S. House seat, he married her over the Memorial Day Weekend and gave her his last name, according to her Monday social-media posts and The Orlando Political Observer." -- CW

Brad Reed of RawStory: "In case you haven't noticed, some conservative Christians are really determined to keep their rights to discriminate against gay people. During his acceptance speech [for a Religious Freedom Award], [Miss. Gov. Phil] Bryant talked about how far Christians would go to defend their religious liberty and deny service to gay people. 'They don't know that Christians have been persecuted throughout the ages,' he said of critics of his state's anti-LGBT law. 'They don't know that if it takes crucifixion, we will stand in linebefore abandoning our faith and our belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.'" --safari

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: A murder-suicide at UCLA disrupted the campus today.

New York Times: "A baby girl delivered on Tuesday at a New Jersey hospital was born with the Zika virus, the mosquito-borne disease that can cause unusually small heads and brain damage in newborns, a doctor said." -- CW

The Commentariat -- May 31, 2016

Afternoon Update

Nora Kelly, in the Atlantic, wonders where Donald Trump sent all the money, including his own, he claims to have raised for veterans, a couple of days after he hijacked an event for veterans for his own self-aggrandizement. Very strange..."Donald Trump has a problem following through. He advocated for banning Muslims from U.S. soil, before qualifying all his policy proposals as 'a suggestion.' He campaigned on the premise he would self-fund his race, before deciding to raise money after all. So when news reports suggested Trump hadn't donated all $6 million he said he raised for veterans' groups at an event this past winter, the revelation seemed to follow his pattern....Trump repeatedly blamed the 'dishonest' and 'unfair' political press on Tuesday for misconstruing the donation process."

...Akhilleus: Drumpf knows all about dishonesty and unfairness. They constitute the core of his being.

The Turtle is Right! Leah Barkoukis, at the Confederate toilet paper site, Town Hall: "Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reassured listeners that Donald Trump will not change the nature of the Republican Party.... Trump is not going to change the institution. He's not going to change the basic philosophy of the party."

...Akhilleus: Quite right. Trump won't change the party. McConnell and the rest of the cynical, anti-American, anti-democratic calculators have already done that. Trump has merely watered the seeds they have sown. But it's a hoot to watch the Turtle Man pretend that he's still in charge. He's the Maginot Line of the Republican Party, and here come the Trump Panzers. Buh-bye, Mitchy.

*****

Julie Davis of the New York Times: President "Obama, who has made a point of speaking out against anti-immigrant sentiment..., has instructed his top advisers that they must not fall short of meeting his goal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States by the fall. But an onerous and complex web of security checks and vetting procedures, shared among several government agencies, has made the target difficult to reach." -- CW

Adam Edelman of the New York Daily News: "Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder thinks fugitive leaker Edward Snowden actually performed a 'public service' when he passed on classified NSA secrets to journalists. 'We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,' Holder told David Axelrod on his CNN-produced podcast 'The Axe Files.'" -- CW

Presidential Race

Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "In a memo to top supporters, Hillary Clinton's top official sought to clarify the campaign's response to a new report from the State Department inspector general and move past a controversy that has dogged the candidate now for 15 months. The 600-word letter from John Podesta, Clinton's chairman and longtime adviser, addresses the IG report;s various findings, but comes back to a single point again and again: that Clinton knows the use of a personal email server was a 'mistake.'" -- CW

Paul Waldman: "For all her many skills, Hillary Clinton is just not that good at running for president. That doesn't mean she won't be good at being president, and it's a reminder that the two are not the same thing.... A different candidate would probably be farther ahead of Trump.... Clinton is also simply not very good at ... delivering speeches.... Clinton ha[s] yet to come up with a resonant theme for her campaign." -- CW ...

... Rebecca Traister of New York: On the campaign trail, "I watched [Hillary Clinton] do the work of retail politics -- the handshaking and small-talking and remembering of names and details of local sites and issues -- like an Olympic athlete. Far from seeing a remote or robotic figure, I observed a woman who had direct, thoughtful, often moving exchanges.... The dichotomy between her public and private presentation has a lot to do with the fact that she has built such a wall between the two. Her pathological desire for privacy is at the root of the never-ending email saga, to name just one example.... [Clinton's] pervasive defensiveness ... gets in the way of her projecting authenticity, an intense desire for privacy that keeps voters from feeling as if they know her -- especially problematic in an era in which social media makes personal connection with voters more important than ever." CW: This is a fullblown profile of Hillary, & it's a pretty good read.

Maryalice Parks of ABC News: "Five animal rights protesters jumped over barricades and rushed the podium at a Bernie Sanders rally in East Oakland, California, on Monday night, prompting the Vermont senator's Secret Service detail to intervene. One of the protesters appeared to be hit by one of the security member's baton, while another was carried out of the venue by his arms and legs. For his part, Sanders did not seem rattled." -- CW

International Man of Misery. Farah Stockman & Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump ... often portrays himself as uniquely capable of wringing concessions out of China through hard-nosed business tactics he has honed over the years. 'I beat China all the time,' Mr. Trump declared in a speech the day he announced his candidacy. 'I own a big chunk of the Bank of America building at 1290 Avenue of the Americas that I got from China in a war. Very valuable.'... Court documents and interviews with people involved in the deal tell a very different story of how he ended up with it." CW: Naturally. It reads as if some Hong Kong billionaires made a chump of Trump. That dinner with the fish heads? Definitely designed to discomfit the Ignorant Abroad. -- CW ...

... Kevin Sullivan of the Washington Post: "If elected, Trump would be the first U.S. president to preside over a global business empire, one that includes seven resorts, hotels and other projects in foreign countries, 11 more under construction and plans for many more. Among them are properties in nations where the United States has important economic and national security concerns -- such as Turkey, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan -- that could put Trump's personal business interests on a collision course with the duty of a president to act solely in the best interest of the United States." In Azerbaijan, his business partners are mafia-like despots. -- CW

Ed Kilgore: "Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein looked at the internals of some recent general election polls and found that adding gender to education levels among white voters produced a shocking gap between the two candidates.... Brownstein argues that each candidate is reaching or in some cases exceeding the all-time records for their party in these demographics -- which means the gap could be larger than ever, too.... If the election does come down to a contest between women and men of any race or level of educational achievement, a Clinton victory would be not only historic, but a demonstration of the power of sisterhood against an opponent who's a cartoon-character representation of The Man." --safari

Emma Green of the Atlantic: "Predictions are dangerous business, especially in the hall of mirrors that American politics has become. Suffice it to say, no one called this U.S. presidential election cycle notTrump, not Sanders, not any of it. Except, perhaps, in a round-about way, a 1979 book about the presidential-primary system [by] James Ceaser, a University of Virginia professor. I spoke with Ceaser about Trump and the unintended effects of trying to make democracy more democratic." Includes interview. --safari (Thanks to PD Pepe for the link.)

Michael Gerson, the WashPo's mild-mannered conservo-columnist, is very, very upset with Little Marco & Paul the Weasel Ryan: "Some Republicans keep expecting Trump to finally remove the mask of misogyny, prejudice and cruelty and act in a more presidential manner. But it is not a mask. It is his true face. Good Republican leaders making the decision to support Trump will end up either humiliated by the association, or betrayed and attacked for criticizing the great leader. Trump leaves no other options." CW: It is good to see a Republican-in-Good-Standing willing to write, "The GOP has selected someone who is unfit to be president, lacking the temperament, stability, judgment and compassion to occupy the office."

Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Donald Trump and his incendiary immigration rhetoric was supposed to send Latino voters to the polls in droves for Democrats this fall. But the Obama administration's controversial immigration raids are threatening to weaken the Democrats' advantage." --safari

Daniel Politi of Slate: "Donald Trump did not wait to reply. Less than two hours after Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol sent out a tweet that said there would soon be news of an 'impressive'independent presidential candidate, the presumptive Republican nominee went on the attack. In a series of tweets, the real estate mogul called Kristol a 'dummy' and an 'embarrassed loser.' He then said Republicans can 'say good bye to the Supreme Court' if an independent contender does materialize." --safari

Beyond the Beltway

Prisons vs. Prisoners. Rachel Poser of the New Yorker: "The P.L.R.A., [a Clinton-era piece of criminal-justice legislation known as the Prison Litigation Reform Act (P.L.R.A.)] passed by Congress in 1996, was designed to reduce the number of lawsuits brought by inmates against prisons....Prisoners' advocates have argued for years that the P.L.R.A. makes it nearly impossible for inmates to get a fair hearing in court, and that it has crippled the federal judiciary's ability to act as a watchdog over prison conditions...the number of federal lawsuits by inmates against prisons has fallen by sixty per cent in the twenty years since the P.L.R.A.'s passage...[I]n practice, critics say, these systems create a tangle of administrative procedures that discourage or disqualify inmates from filing lawsuits." --safari

Alexia Fernández Campbell of The Atlantic: "Girl Scouts has been losing members for more than a decade as it struggles to reach the new American girl, who is more likely than ever to be an ethnic minority or come from poor, immigrant families. Even though the organization's researchers have highlighted the need to reflect the 'changing face of girls' in America, Girl Scouts are still mostly white. The percentage of Latina scouts (12 percent) and African American scouts (11 percent) has hardly budged in the past four years. Meanwhile, nearly half of girls aged 5 to 17 in the United States are now ethnic minorities, up from 38 percent in 2000...[W]hy this recruitment failure matters: Many of these girls, who already face so many obstacles, are missing out on a program that has given millions of others the confidence and some of tools they need to succeed." --safari

Way Beyond

Marina Koren of The Atlantic: "Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, has been found guilty of crimes against humanity committed during his eight-year-rule and sentenced to life in prison. Habré was convicted Monday of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and rape, the BBC reported, nearly a year after his trial began...The trial was a landmark event in international criminal justice. In Africa, it marked the first time in which the courts of one country prosecuted the former ruler of another for alleged human-rights abuses." --safari

Tim Radford of the Guardian: "One in three children in Europe between the ages of six and nine are either overweight or obese, according to a report that also warns that by 2025 the number of under-fives worldwide who are overweight will have risen from an estimated 41 million now to 70 million.... The cost of treating disorders related to obesity now amounts to a tenth of total healthcare costs in Europe, and, according to the report, threatens the sustainability of public health services in all nations." --safari

Michael Klarein Salon from TomDispatch.com: "Pity the poor petro-states. Once so wealthy from oil sales that they could finance wars, mega-projects, and domestic social peace simultaneously, some of them are now beset by internal strife or are on the brink of collapse as oil prices remain at ruinously low levels. Unlike other countries, which largely finance their governments through taxation, petro-states rely on their oil and natural gas revenues.... Now, with oil below $50 and likely to persist at that level, they find themselves curbing public spending and fending off rising domestic discontent or even incipient revolt.... In 2016, one thing is finally clear, however: the business model for these corporatized states is busted." --safari