Scott Boehmer

Tag: Donald Trump

  • Emulating Trump’s Lack of Decency

    Even the way people on Wall Street talk and interact is changing. Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at “woke doctrine” and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people.

    “I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘r****d’ and ‘p***y’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”

    Some Wall Streeters also feel able to embrace making money openly, without nodding to any broader social goals. “Most of us don’t have to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism,” one said.

    FT Reporters

    Is corporate America going Maga? (Financial Times)

  • By “Personal Responsibility” We Meant “Impunity”

    Decades ago, people in Trump’s orbit, such as Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, taught him that rules are malleable, that winning is all that matters. Democrats, however, are by and large a party of rule followers. Despite being forced out of the race by his own party, President Joe Biden is still an institutionalist. There he was, smiling next to Trump, the man whom he had characterized as an “existential threat.” Biden’s courtesies, his adherence to norms, extend all the way down. Susie Wiles, Trump’s former co–campaign manager, said that Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, has been “very helpful” to her, and that he has gone so far as to host a dinner for her and others at his home.

    Opposition party this is not. The Democrats are playing one game, and Trump is playing another. Trump is winning.

    John Hendrickson

    Trump’s Rule-Breaking Keeps Working (The Atlantic)

    As Republicans whitewashed January 6 and the legal system failed to hold Trump to account, the importance of Trump’s attack on our democracy seemed to fade. Even the Trump v. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which undermined the key principle that all Americans are equal before the law by declaring Trump above it, got less attention than its astonishingly revolutionary position warranted, coming as it did just four days after President Joe Biden looked and sounded old in a televised presidential debate.

    Heather Cox Richardson

    January 6, 2025 (Letters from an American)

    A federal judge dismissed the Jan. 6 election interference case against Donald Trump hours after federal prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss both that case and the Mar-a-Lago documents cases against Trump.

    Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the case without prejudice.

    The move was widely expected. Just a day after the election, special counsel Jack Smith, who headed the investigations, began to unwind the federal cases against Trump: the first for clinging to power in 2020, events that resulted in the storming of the U.S. Capitol; the second for hoarding classified documents and obstructing FBI efforts to retrieve them.

    NPR Washington Desk

    Judge grants dismissal of Jan. 6 case against Trump (NPR)

    There is little in the part of the report covering Trump’s behavior that was not already public information. The report explains how Trump lied that he won the 2020 presidential election and continued to lie even when his own appointees and employees told him he had lost. It lays out how he pressured state officials to throw out votes for his opponent, then-president-elect Joe Biden, and how he and his cronies recruited false electors in key states Trump lost to create slates of false electoral votes.

    It explains how Trump tried to force Justice Department officials to support his lie and to trick states into rescinding their electoral votes for Biden and how, finally, he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to either throw out votes for Biden or send state counts back to the states. When Pence refused, correctly asserting that he had no such power, Trump urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol. He refused to call them off for hours.

    Smith explained that the Justice Department concluded that Trump was guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States by trying “to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest”; obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct by creating false evidence; and conspiracy against rights by trying to take away people’s right to vote for president.

    Heather Cox Richardson

    January 14, 2025 (Letters from an American)

    Appearing in court virtually from his Mar-a-Lago home Friday [10 January 2025], President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced for his crimes in the New York “hush money” case and released with no restrictions.

    Justice Juan Merchan followed through on a promise made one week ago to give Trump a sentence of unconditional discharge, which includes neither jail time nor any other restriction that might impede Trump after his inauguration on Jan. 20.

    Graham Kates, Kathryn Watson, Katrina Kaufman, Shawna Mizelle, Nathalie Nieves

    Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law, and he’s done this to serve his own ends, and to encourage others to reject the jury verdict that he finds so distasteful.

    Joshua Steinglass, Prosecutor

    Trump sentenced in felony “hush money” case, released with no restrictions (CBS News)

    In a historic decision, a divided Supreme Court on Monday [1 July 2024] ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly.

    Amy Howe

    Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution (SCOTUSblog)

  • When Trump Invades Canada

    Get the women and children and the maple syrup to safety.

    Julie Nolke, Canadian

    When Trump Invades Canada (Julie Nolke)

  • A Second Gilded Age

    Now, more than a century later, America has entered a second Gilded Age.

    Monopolies are once again taking over vast swaths of the economy. So we must strengthen antitrust enforcement to bust up powerful companies.

    Now another generation of robber barons, exemplified by Elon Musk, is accumulating unprecedented money and power. So, once again, we must tax these exorbitant fortunes.

    Wealthy individuals and big corporations are once again paying off lawmakers, sending them billions to conduct their political campaigns, even giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices. So we must protect our democracy from Big Money, just as we did before.

    As it was during the first Gilded Age, voter suppression is too often making it harder for people of color to participate in our democracy. So it’s once again critical to defend and expand voting rights.

    Working people are once again being exploited and abused, child labor is returning, unions are being busted, the poor are again living in unhealthy conditions, homelessness is on the rise, and the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is nearly as large as in the first Gilded Age.

    So once again we need to protect the rights of workers to organize, invest in social safety nets, and revive guardrails to protect against the abuses of great wealth and power.

    Robert Reich

    From the Robber Barons to Elon Musk: Will History Repeat Itself? (Robert Reich)

  • Silicon Valley Heads to Mar-a-Lago

    When Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago on the evening before Thanksgiving, he and other guests reportedly stood with hands over hearts while listening to a recording of the national anthem sung by people accused of January 6–related crimes. Whether Zuckerberg knew who the singers were is unclear. But the scene was uncanny given that January 6, when it happened, was a bright-red line for the tech industry. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch banned or suspended Trump, and companies such as Amazon paused donations to election deniers. Now, with the arrival of Trump 2.0, that red line has been erased entirely.

    Lora Kelley

    Silicon Valley Heads to Mar-a-Lago (The Atlantic)

  • Why Billionaires Obey in Advance

    The Trump administration is being actively taught right now that it can expect the full cooperation of the leaders of industry. Why are they offering themselves without being asked? Because that’s what they’re trained for.

    The myth of the moral billionaire has dogged me my entire career. For years I’ve been reassured by people inside and outside the power structure of Silicon Valley that the moral judgement of people at the top of major companies was so reliable that it required no real oversight.

    Jacob Ward

    Why Billionaires Obey in Advance (The Rip Current)

  • Rules of Engagement

    1) When somebody hurts you, tell them. When somebody steps on your toes, let them know that they stepped on your toes. See how they react. They’ll tell you who they are.

    2) When somebody seems too unsafe to trust with your pain, set a boundary. If somebody has proved themselves less safe than you thought, but you still think it’s safe to do so, tell them that you’re going to have to withdraw in some way from them. See how they react. They’ll tell you who they are.

    3) When somebody seems too unsafe to trust with your boundaries, leave. If it’s not safe to tell them, or you’re not sure if it’s safe, withdraw from them without telling them. See how they react. They’ll tell you who they are.

    A. R. Moxon

    Rules of Engagement (The Reframe)

  • Wind the clock

    What you don’t do is give up. The outcome of this election has exposed to many the realities we didn’t want to see, of just how many people around us openly embrace hatred and bigotry and authoritarianism. Standing up to that can be scary and even dangerous, but it is also right. Beliefs are the things you stand for even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard, even when there might be consequences. And the less danger you, personally, face for standing up for what you believe, the more obligated you are to do it.

    Molly White

    Wind the clock (Citation Needed)

  • American Reality

    The shining possibility of an America living up to its ideals feels washed away by the dark reality of the America that is.