May 22, 2020--Books

Everyone knows Trump doesn't read.

Surely, not Foreign Affairs, not The Atlantic, not even Golf Digest where there are lots of pictures.

But now we know who in Washington and New York do read--every guest appearing on programs on CNN and MSNBC.

Because of the pandemic, guests phone in from home offices via Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime and invariably their home offices include their book cases, which serve as an attractive background.

Jon Meacham, an NBC Contributor who is also a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, not surprisingly has more books on display on his elegant shelves than anyone else.

Often more interesting to me than hearing what Eugene Robinson has to say about Trump and China, is what I can see he has been reading. I was especially tickled when I saw one day that he had on the shelves the same edition as I do of Ron Chernow's biography of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Sad to say when I snooped around to see what the Fox News hosts and guests have on their bookshelves, I've been discovering that few have bookcases as part of their home TV studios and there are no books in sight. On mantels, though, on display, most had a few airport-art tchotchkes.

What's this all about, I wondered. It didn't, though, take more than a moment to figure it out. America is divided I many ways.

March 6, 2019--Jack: T-PAC

It's that time of year when conservatives gather for the annual CPAC conference. 

The highlight this time was the appearance Sunday afternoon of Donald Trump who spoke for nearly two-and-a-half hours! Fidel-Castro, Mussolini-length, and surely a CPAC record for the longest expletive-larded speech ever. 

Trump had a lot on his mind. Most of it from agita. 

Just a few days earlier, while Michael Cohen was testifying before the House Oversight Committee, he was on Air Force One heading back to Washington from the collapsed summit with Kim Jong-un. At about the same time the New York Times was reporting that he personally countermanded his senior intelligence advisers and granted his son-in-law top secret security clearance.

And so he seized the opportunity to get many grievances off his chest and the audience loved every minute of it. They were as one. So much so that they stood and cheered for more than a disgraceful minute when he proclaimed John McCain dead. Tearfully, it will be a moment they will share with their Republican grandchildren.

Slumped and weary-looking as if he were bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, Trump entered stage right where a lonely American flag stood, forlorn and limp on its pole. As if just happening to notice the flag, slowly he approached it, bending to embrace it. He coddled and rocked it in his arms as if he was comforting a loved one. With a sad smile, moving his lips dramatically so all could read them, he said, "My baby."

While streaming his remarks a day or two later to see if my eyes had deceived me on Sunday, the phone rang, and, as if he knew what I was up to, I was not surprised that it was Jack.


"I was watching your favorite show," he said, without even a greeting. "'Morning Joe.' All they could talk about was that speech. To tell you the truth I agreed with Joe and his guests that the slur about John McCain was way off base. Especially coming from someone who managed to dodge the draft."

"That was the lowest of many low points," I said.

Jack said, "But off that performance, if you guys are not careful you could be looking at six more years of our president." He chuckled at the prospect.

"Enlighten me."

"One of Joe Scarborough's quests, someone from the Washington Post, called Trump insane. He said if you had an old grandfather that crazy you'd lock him up in the attic. Another guest accused Trump of being 'unhinged.'"

"That was Eugene Robinson," I muttered.

"And then Mike Barnicle chimed is to say that the only thing missing was for Trump to show up wearing paper slippers."

"He's a regular," I said.

"I actually thought that was pretty funny. But he and the others totally missed the bigger point."

"Which is?"

"Look, who am I to tell you guys what to do, but if you want to win in 2020 you need to get your act together. Not only have you given Trump a perfect person to run against . . ."

"Spare me. It's a long time before we have a candidate. Now it's just a couple of dozen hopefuls looking to gain traction. It's premature to talk about running against Trump. We first have to sort things out."

"I mean,"Jack said, "We used to have Nancy Pelosi to run against--which I admit didn't work out so well in 2018--but now we have that girl from the Bronx. I can never remember her name . . ."

"Alexander Ocasio-Cortez."

"You have initials for her, right?"

"Some people refer to her as AOC. What's your problem with her?"

"Actually it's the opposite of a problem. She's a gift that keeps on giving. Isn't she the one who wants to ban hamburgers to reduce global warming?"

"Not really, but your guys are accusing her of that."

"She's perfect to run against. She's a socialist and her ego is so large that she can't get enough air time on TV. I know she turns a lot of your people on but she's too far out for the people I assume you are hoping will vote your way. If she's the new face of the Democrat Party, Trump will be a shoe in."

"Before we declare him the winner let's see what Mueller and the House committees come up with."

"You need to remember that the more dirt that came up about Clinton the more popular he became. And he won a second term. But OAC is not your major problem. The fact that after maybe the worst month of his presidency, Trump, like Clinton is seeing his favorables going up. Just this week by three points. To 46 percent or so."

"What then is our major problem?"

"You're doing it again."

"What again?"

"Just like last time around when you thought Trump was just a joke. You couldn't imagine him beating Hillary. And guess what--he did. Mainly because she and the rest of you wouldn't take Trump seriously and looked down your noses at him and his supporters. And now you're doing a version of the same thing. Again take CPAC. Rather than trying to figure them out and especially Trump' appeal to them--they listened and cheered for him for two-and-a-half hours--you're busy making fun of him. How his speech was incoherent and that he's crazy. Things like that. By doing this you're motivating his people to stay loyal to him and are turning off a lot of people who are on the fence about him."

"I don't disagree with that," I conceded. "All during the last presidential campaign I thought Hillary and the liberal media were missing what was happening in the middle of the country and therefore we made a huge mistake by not showing respect for people who live and vote there. Rather, we too frequently mocked and disparaged Trump and those who turned out to be his voters."

Jack said, "And your reaction to CPAC shows me you're doing the same thing all over again. Which, for me is just fine. But to win you need to recognize that Trump, when it comes to politics and marketing himself, is crazy like a fox. He's totally brilliant at that. I know you think he's dumb and maybe about things you care about he is. But about appealing to his base and a lot of independents he's a version of a political genius. 

"If you want to win, first, you need to not nominate one of your crazies who Trump will mock 24/7. But you also need to get more comfortable with at least a segment of his followers. To see them as fellow Americans who have some legitimate issues, including some you share. Like worrying about how their children and grandchildren will fare as the economy changes and how the demographics of America are becoming more diverse than even some of your people are comfortable with. Don't fool yourself into believing all your liberal friends are so happy about these changes. 

"So you need to find a way to talk about this that's not bigoted and condemning. You need to have and show more understanding of the views and fears of people who you disagree with. You have to stop pointing fingers of contempt at them. Again, I'm talking about just some of Trump's people. From your perspective most are, to quote Hillary who was right about this, irredeemable. One of your problems is that you assume everyone is or should be as tolerant as you try to be. Well, you know what, in this regard you and your friends are far from perfect. You need to take a hard look at what's really in your heart." 

I finally said, "I've been attempting to make that argument for years. Liberals are more tolerant, every poll shows that, but there are a lot of closeted progressives who aren't happy about all the changes you mentioned. But in regard to immigrants and people of color Trump and the CPAC crowd are way out of line. There's no way to paper over that"

"I'll tell you what was really going on with the CPACers."

"I'm all ears."

"They were marking the end of the traditional Republican Party. It's now Trump's party. They could call themselves T-PAC. And his speech, if you can call it that, was like an inaugural address or a comedian's stand-up spritz to celebrate the victory of this new party. That explains the John McCain crack. They saw his death as if it signaled the end of the old Republican Party. A party that they saw him as representing. But again what they did was disgraceful. No two ways about that. 

"But here's the bottom line," Jack continued, "Trump and many of his people are really anarchists. You should call them out for that just as they accuse all of you of being socialists. But you should make a distinction between that part of T-PAC and the others who aren't so radical. As I've been saying, you need to find a way to reach out to and appeal to some of them. You also need to recognize that a large part of Trump's appeal is that he's entertaining. Which politically is not a bad thing. We are an entertainment-obsessed nation and you should look for someone to run against him who average people can enjoy listening to."

"I agree with that."

"Otherwise you're cooked."

September 5, 2018--Boooooring

Mika got it right yesterday morning.

I dosed off Morning Joe for a couple of weeks, needing respite from all-Trump-all-the-time, but with the onset of the new season (the "year" starts up again the day after Labor Day) I felt the atavistic compulsion to reconnect to what is going on. Including trolling for subjects to write about that do not have anything to do with Trump.

Lots of luck with that I realized on Tuesday as early as five-after-six, with the first five minutes of MJ devoted to Joe and Willie exchanging barbs about the crumbling fate of the Yankees and the Red Sox's historic run.

Just two minutes into their joshing you could see Mika cringing. Up to their old schtick. If looks could wound her look would draw blood.

"Can we get on with things?" exasperated, she said. They ignored her. "There's lots going on and we need to talk about that."

"Yes, John McCain. His funeral," Joe said without enthusiasm, still more interested in baseball gossip.

"It's over," Mika said, cryptically.

"Not until it's over," Joe said, he thought slyly, quoting Yogi Berra, winking at Wille, with baseball still more on his mind than McCain.

"Not the funeral, but the presidency."

"Over?" Joe said, paying attention to his cohost and fiancée for a rare moment. 

"This show is so boring," she said. 

I grew excited, expecting a family spat. Mika pops off a few times a year and videos of her meltdowns usually go viral. I thought--what an inventive way for her to launch the year. Trashing her own show.

Having the floor she pressed on. "Nothing is new. In fact, nothing can be new. Everything is predictable. We know exactly what he is going to say. Or tweet. His whole presidency depends on a steady stream of surprises. In there own way, excitements. Engaging outrages. He's the producer of his own reality TV presidency and it's about to be cancelled."

"You know, Mika's half right," one of their panelists, off camera, said. You could sense he was worried that the "half right" could be misinterpreted, come off as patronizing. Which it did. Though smacking of enough truth that she and the others let it go. She was happy just being paid attention to.

As a result there was no more sports talk. They were off and running, making being boring interesting. 

"If his people start to get bored with him," Sam Stein of the Daily Beast said, "he's cooked. Don't mishear me, they believe him, more important they believe in him. They are also there for the show. If you live in some, forgive me, godforsaken place like Fargo, North Dakota, where the most exciting thing is the Charley Pride concert, it doesn't get any better than going to one of his rallies after standing in line for hours to get a seat for his political standup spritz. But before we get giddy about this, at the Fargo rally Trump people claimed 6,000 turned out, though the local press had the number much less than that."

"Like the ongoing numbers game about the size of the crowd at his inauguration," MSNBC's Kasie Hunt chimed in.

"One thing Trump knows for certain," this from WAPO columnist and editor Eugene Robinson, "Is how to pay attention to ratings. The Apprentice didn't go off the air because Trump was running for president but because the ratings were heading south. If the ratings and demographics had continued to be strong NBC would probably still have it on the air. I don't believe the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution forbids that. Making money from a TV show. Look, he's still getting away with making a killing from his hotels and resorts. I'm not hearing about anyone giving up their Mar-a-Lago membership or the Trump hotel in Washington offering weekend discounts."

Willie said, "There are reports that attendance at his rallies is declining. It's not such a hot ticket anymore. And more than a few who show up appear to filter out before his act is over."

"You're right," Joe jumped in,"politics is all about numbers. And enthusiasm. He could be slipping in both realms. If he is, as Mika said, it's all over."

"Well," Mika said, now all smiles, "at the beginning of being over."

Glancing at the clock, also smiling, Joe said, "We made it to six-thirty without being boring. I think we're off to a good start for the year."

December 9, 2015--Political Stand-Up

The other night I was reading with Hardball turned on in the background.

Among Chris Matthew's guests was Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Washington Post. They were trying to make sense of Donald TRUMP's call for a "pause" in allowing Muslims to enter the country until we can "figure out what the hell is going on."

Their point--as it was true for most media outlets and politicians from both parties--was that this was an outrageous example of ethnic profiling, impractical to implement, likely unconstitutional, and inconsistent with everything we stand for as Americans.

About 10 minutes into this discussion, MSNBC cut away to the World War II aircraft carrier Yorktown berthed in Charleston, SC, where Donald TRUMP was speaking before a large group of followers who had come together to hear him and take note of the 74th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I looked up from my book. I had only seen and listened to TRUMP in snippets. The most liberal of the cable news networks was about to do something unusual--stay with him for awhile and let viewers come to their own conclusions about what he had to say. And they did so, allowing their coverage to run on and on for a full 45 minutes, uninterrupted for commentary and, more unexpectedly, for commercials.

This was TRUMP red in tooth and claw.

As it turned out, what struck me was not so much what he had to say but how. His performance, because performance it was.

I have listened to many campaign speeches, even gone in person to a number presidential candidates' rallies--all were versions of performances, but none compared to TRUMP's, which was more than anything else pure comedic entertainment. Political stand-up shtick.

First of all, if you close your eyes he sounds more like Mel Brooks than Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, both great stump performers. Also, take a look at him with his Zero Mostel hairdo.

Then there are the gestures, facial expressions, the mugging, the shrugs, the self-referential asides, the winks and nods, the bantering with individual audience members who called out or disrupted him. Like all practiced comedians he loves hecklers and has ready put-downs that serves both to silence them and rally those who are there to embrace and enjoy him.

He's not quite in Don Rickles' league when it comes to attack humor, but for a political operative he's pretty good and I found myself chuckling along with the audience. When putting down the MSNBC reporter covering the event he was at his biting, nasty best.

When scorching Chris Christie (who TRUMP claimed he was forced to do because of what the NJ governor said about his plans for traveling Muslims) he pretended to do so reluctantly.

In full shrug he said, "I have no choice. He's never attacked me before. So I have to do it." And he did with comedically savage strokes, pretending to be Christie at one of his daily breakfast meetings with his staff, improvising a dialogue among them about shutting down the George Washington Bridge for six hours. It was laugh-out-loud funny.

No, he resisted making fun of what the rotund Christie might have eaten at the breakfast. My guess is the next time he riffs about who my mother used to call Chris Crispy the breakfast menu will be up for grabs.

And then any time he referred to Jeb Bush he rested his head on his hands as if sleeping. Talking continuously about poor Jeb's lack of "energy" has served TRUMP well. He also never failed to mention use's dramatic descent in the polls. Jeb who was originally thought to be the inevitable nominee, largely as the result of TRUMP's relentless mockery, is now languishing with George Pataki in political Purgatory.

With about five minutes left in Hardball's time slot they cut back to Chris Matthews and Gene Robinson who looked as if they had aged ten years. They sat there as if stunned, uncharacteristically silent for at least half a dozen beats. They couldn't figure out how to respond, what to say. Perhaps it was also the first time for them that they had seen the full TRUMP spritz.

Between them they have nearly 100 years of experience covering politics. They exist and operate within a political paradigm where what candidates have to say about the issues is what counts. Their policy proposals and five-part programs to take on ISIS are what they're used to vetting and commenting on. But shtick about Christie at breakfast or how TRUMP makes fun of Jeb Bush are beyond Matthews' and Robinson's purview.

They aren't getting it. They aren't comfortable or familiar with what TRUMP is about and why he is doing so well in the polls.

It's not about policies stupid, it's about mobilizing anger and fear through political comedy and entertainment.

TRUMP is more like George Carlin and Bill Maher than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Jeb Bush.

When I stopped chuckling and thought about the political content of TRUMP's performance, I was as horrified as Matthews and Robinson. What he is proposing to do about Muslims is abhorrent to me. Nothing less than unAmerican. But there I was being swept along. I reminded myself of something Geraldo Rivera of all people said many months ago--"Who would you rather watch for an hour--Jeb Bush or Donald TRUMP?"

The answer is obvious.

For many months I have been writing and warning about TRUMP's appeal. One of my liberal fiends thinks I have gone over to "the other side." Well, I haven't.

Another said, "You're spending too much time in Florida." Well, I haven't been.

I am not intending to vote for him. I am simply attempting to explain his appeal and, frankly, as a political junkie, enjoy his craft.

Most of my progressive friends explain TRUMP's appeal by claiming that "Americans are stupid."

It is not wise to be thus dismissive. The American people are who they are, who they've always been. In their stupidity they somehow managed to elect Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Unlike Matthews and Robinson we should try to figure out what is really going on out there in the country beyond the Beltway and in from both coasts. Smugly mocking our politics and TRUMP will help assure his election. We do so at our peril.