On Thursday, Peter Alexander, national correspondent at NBC News, reported (on Twitter, where most reporting happens now) that the U.S. Treasury Department had quietly eased sanctions to allow U.S. companies to do business with the Russian FSB; 40 minutes later, he noted that it was a “technical fix” planned under the Obama administration. The first tweet was retweeted more than 6,200 times, the second a piddling 247.
This has been the pattern of late. Last Saturday, following Trump’s controversial executive order on refugees, CNBC’s John Harwood reported that the Department of Justice had no role in evaluating the order (3,000+ retweets); one hour later, he issued a correction (199). Similarly, Raw Story cited American Foreign Policy Council scholar Ilan Berman to suggest that there was “no readout of Trump-Putin call because White House turned off recording.” The tweet linking to that story has 9,700 retweets, and travel blogger Geraldine DeRuiter’s outraged tweet — “They. Turned. Off. The. Recording. When. He. Called. Putin. IF OBAMA HAD DONE THIS THE GOP WOULD HAVE HAD HIM TRIED FOR TREASON.” — has been retweeted nearly 30,000 times. Berman took to Twitter to explain that he didn’t know “for a fact” that the recording had been turned off; it was simply “conjecture.” Twenty-seven retweets.
Care for more? There was a great deal of Supreme Court–related misinformation. Jeff Zeleny, CNN senior White House correspondent, reported that the White House had set up Donald Trump’s Supreme Court announcement as a “prime-time contest,” noting identical Twitter pages for potential appointees Neil Gorsuch and Tim Hardiman (1,100+ retweets); a half hour later, he noted that the pages were in fact not set up by the White House (159 retweets).
Off of Twitter, NBC News reported that Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee, “opposed campus military recruiters” in an op-ed written for Columbia University’s student newspaper in February 1987. It wasn’t true. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Neil Gorsuch founded a “Fascism Forever” club at his Jesuit high school. That wasn’t true, either.
And there was still more. Reuters reported that Trump was responsible for the SEAL-team raid in Yemen that left an American soldier dead, and even approved the operation “without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.” It almost certainly wasn’t true.
The Associated Press reported that Donald Trump “warned in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send U.S. troops” into the country. A spokesman for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto immediately decried the report as “absolutely false,” and U.S. officials explained that the comments were intended as a joke.
Half a dozen sites reported that Donald Trump changed the name of Black History Month to “African-American History Month.” False.
Again: This was all within the last week.Journalists, citing Donald Trump’s own serial fabulism, have lamented that journalism is uniquely difficult in the era of Trump. It’s not. Journalism, as a trade, is the same now as it was under Barack Obama as it was under George W. Bush. The basic rules still apply. When you make a claim, have as many sources as possible at hand to support it. Name your sources, as often as possible. If you do not have reliable evidence for a claim, don’t make it. If you don’t have a firm grasp of your subject, consult an expert. Be fair-minded. Be honest.
The above does not require “skepticism.” It does require prioritizing what is true over what is exciting. Anyone with a high-school diploma has been instructed in how to read with a basic amount of discrimination — to note the difference between “primary” and “secondary” sources, to evaluate the credibility of an assertion. We should be able to expect journalists to exercise at least this much discernment.
There is a theory, which has mustered considerable assent, that Donald Trump — or at least Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Sean Spicer — are working to undermine not simply the left-leaning press but the very notions of “fact” and “truth,” so that they can wield power more effectively, shielded by a nationwide epistemological fog. Perhaps this is so. But even if it is, the situation is not righted by the journalistic corps’ doing the same.
This country has plenty of activists, in government and out of it. Massive numbers of people on both sides are prepared to march and shout and donate and propagandize on behalf of their preferred causes. We don’t need more activists. We need journalists.
-
No comments on Shorter version: Do your job correctly
-
The number one British album today in 1965 was “The Rolling Stones No. 2”:
The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1982 …
… from the number one album, the J. Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame”:
-
The number one single today in 1966:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 2006, the Rolling Stones played during the halftime of the Super Bowl:
-
The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1965:
The number one British album today in 1967 was “The Monkees”:
The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1978:
-
Automotive News reports:
There’s another round of midengine Chevrolet Corvette spy photos, and they’re perhaps the best look at the long-rumored sports car yet.
Spy photographers spotted what appears to be a midengine Corvette at one of General Motors’ winter-testing facilities.
The photos indicate that the vehicle will have a lower hood line, a longer rear deck and a much shorter dash-to-axle ratio.
The midengine mule was spotted, at times, next to a pair of other Corvette prototypes that are likely next-gen ZR1 mules.
Despite being heavily camouflaged, some key design features such as taillights and the vehicle’s exhaust layout were visible.
The latest photos illustrate just how much of a departure, in terms of design and engineering, a midengine Corvette would be for GM.
It remains unclear where a midengine Corvette would stand in the Chevrolet performance lineup and whether it will replace the C7 Corvette outright or coexist with the current generation.
In August, The Detroit News, citing multiple sources, reported that GM plans to begin selling a midengine Corvette in early 2019.
The Corvette, one of GM’s oldest nameplates, continues to attract mostly older buyers, and the automaker is eager to switch to a midengine layout to attract younger consumers, the paper said.
There have been several reports in Car and Driver and other media outlets over the past three years speculating about revived plans for a midengine Corvette.
While the Corvette has been GM’s premier performance vehicle for decades, a switch to a midengine layout would entail a major overhaul of the current car, the C7.
Almost no parts could be carried over because nearly all of the major components on a midengine car would be in different locations.
Switching from a front to midengine layout would entail engineering a new chassis, creating a new transaxle — the transmission and axle — to drive the rear wheels, developing new cooling, air-conditioning and suspension systems, and designing an all-new body.
A midengine Corvette would give GM a true competitor to Ford’s GT supercar, which is midengined, as well as supercars from Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche.
In June 2016, GM disclosed plans to spend $290 million to retool the Bowling Green, Ky., assembly plant where the Corvette is assembled.
The factory’s assembly operations are set to be upgraded and modified for “technology upgrades and manufacturing process improvements.”
In 2015, GM said it would spend $439 million on a new paint shop at the Corvette-only plant. Work on the paint shop began in 2015 that year and will run until mid-2017.
Motor1 suggests that the mid-engine car will be in addition to, not in place of, the current Corvette:
Two of the most anticipated American sports cars are under development side by side.
The engineers in charge of the Chevrolet Corvette are keeping very busy this winter by developing several versions of the sports car at once, and these spy photos offer a fantastic look of the mid-engine model and future ZR1 testing together. This is our first opportunity to compare them next to each other.
With its short, sloping nose and long rear section, Chevy is taking a familiar supercar design approach for its mid-engine Corvette. The undulating camouflage on the bulging hood suggests there might be an intake there or the designers are going for a highly sculpted shape. Two bubbles in the roof give the driver and passenger more headroom while keeping the center section low.
Openings in the concealment along the rear fenders hint that there might be intakes there for feeding air to the engine. The camouflage at the tail hides the lights but keeps the taillights relatively unhidden. The quad exhausts and exposed muffler look good, but it’s surprising not to see a big diffuser or wing back there. These aerodynamic devices are largely the norm at the rear of many super cars today.
When not on the test track, these spy shots show that Chevy is keeping the mid-engine Corvette highly camouflaged. Not only does a massive covering completely hide the shape of the body, but the company also has a pair of pickups flanking the much-anticipated vehicle.
In comparison, the ZR1 appears to sit slightly higher than the mid-engine ‘Vette but still looks mean. These shots show it with two separate wings – an incredibly tall one with large end plates and a smaller example. The ZR1s here feature bulging hoods and aggressive front fascia designs.
We expect the ZR1 to arrive late in 2017 as a 2018 model year vehicle, and it might use Chevy’s new LT5 6.2-liter dual-overhead cam V8. The different wings hint that there might be an even hotter performance package.
The first question that comes to mind is: Is this actually a Corvette, or is this perhaps the next Cadillac XLR, which was based on the Corvette but with the NorthStar V-8 engine and more luxury accouterments.
There remains a certain illogic in replacing the rear-wheel-drive Corvette, of which Chevrolet sells every one it makes, with a mid-engine replacement using unproven technology (of which GM has a bad habit of sending into the marketplace before it’s really ready) and a list price likely to be far beyond $100,000.
CarGurus presents GM’s supposed rationale:
The average ‘Vette buyer is a 59-year-old male, but Chevrolet would love to start sending Corvettes home with guys and gals a decade or two younger. Certainly the C7 appeals to a younger crowd, but the Corvette brand has become associated with being a mid-life crisis purchase. When was the last time you saw someone driving a Corvette who didn’t have white hair?
Younger folks tend to buy the Camaro or Mustang.
Part of the reason is because older buyers are usually better-equipped to buy such an expensive car than their younger counterparts. In fact, more than 40 percent of Corvettes are purchased with cash.
There’s a new Corvette on the horizon, though, that might be enough to persuade younger folks with extra cash to jump on the Corvette train. …
It would also, GM hopes, make the car appeal to a younger crowd. Ferrari’s average buyer is 47, and Lamborghini’s is 48, while the average Porsche 911 buyer is 52.
The biggest problem, in my humble opinion, is that the Corvette was coolest when older people were young. The other brands require a deeper appreciation for quality cars, while the Corvette is a feel-good purchase that makes people reminiscent of when they were younger.
Happily, even at my advanced age I am younger than the average Corvette buyer. Does that explain why I don’t own one, or is it the manifest unfairness of life> That rationale lacks logic. Comments on the Car Gurus post point out that you can spend $90,000 on the current Corvette. A mid-engined Corvette would be far more expensive than that. If younger buyers don’t buy Corvettes due to their price now, a more expensive Corvette won’t change that. And if you’re, say, 35 to 45 and rich, you seem more likely to buy a Ferrari or Porsche.
The current Corvette is a performance bargain for the price. I’m not certain why Chevy wants to screw that up, but it is GM we’re talking about.
-
The UW Athletic Department reported sad news yesterday:
The Wisconsin Department of Athletics is saddened to learn that Jeff Sauer, UW’s men’s hockey coach from 1982 to 2002, has passed away at the age of 73.
Sauer led the Badgers to 489 victories, the most victories for a UW coach in any sport. He guided Wisconsin to the 1983 and 1990 NCAA titles. In addition, the Badgers won WCHA regular-season titles in 1990 and 2000 and WCHA playoff crowns in 1983, 1988, 1990, 1995 and 1998.
Sauer was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame on Sept. 16, 2016.
“Our entire athletic department family is saddened to hear of the passing of Coach Sauer,” Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said. “Jeff was a hockey man through and through. He had a passion for the sport and for coaching, and his imprint on the game will be felt forever through the lives he touched. Our hockey programs at Wisconsin benefitted greatly from Jeff’s influence. I want to extend the condolences of Wisconsin Athletics to Jeff’s family, friends, colleagues and former players.”
“Coach Sauer’s record speaks for itself, but he’s just done so much besides coaching hockey,” UW men’s hockey coach Tony Granato said. “That is the part I will miss most about him. He was about caring for people and sharing. I watched him volunteer endlessly for both the U.S. Sled Hockey and Hearing Impaired teams and watched him do anything that was asked of him for any special situation that was needed.
“He was just a great person and anyone that has had the pleasure of knowing him, playing for him or that was touched by what he gave us was just so lucky to have him as a coach and friend.”
“It’s a tough day, certainly for the people that were close to Jeff and knew him,” UW women’s hockey coach Mark Johnson said. “He was a great man and a tremendous ambassador for the game of hockey.
“I’ve known him since I was seven or eight and he has had an impact on my career, whether as a young player, a college player or coach. He was the one in 1980 that convinced my dad, after their Friday night game between Wisconsin and Colorado College, that my dad should fly out to Lake Placid that Saturday to watch our gold medal game. Obviously Jeff and my dad were extremely close, my dad coached him when he was at Colorado College and he was an assistant coach for my dad. They both loved baseball and both got involved in hockey and had a passion for the game.
“He’s going to be missed for a lot of reasons. He was great for the sport, he ran a great program at Colorado College for 11 years and he took over for my dad here in the early 1980s and did an outstanding job for 20 years, winning a couple of national championships. I coached with him here for six years and I played under him with different national teams.
“Jeff was also instrumental in the foundation of our women’s hockey program as he was a great friend to the program, especially in the early years. He has impacted my life in a lot of different ways and I want make sure people are praying and their thoughts are with Jamie and the rest of his family. I’m sure they are stunned by his passing and it is a sad day for the hockey community, especially for the people that were close to him.”Andrew Baggot chronicles Sauer’s accomplishments:
One: Sauer succeeded an icon and found a way to create his own championship legacy.
Bob Johnson was that legend. He built the Badgers into a perennial powerhouse, winning three NCAA titles from 1973 to ’81 before Sauer took over in 1982 and produced two national championship-winners of his own.
Two: Sauer left the college game as a coach in 2003, but instead of easing into retirement, he took his generosity and love of hockey to the disabled and excelled on an international stage.
In addition to coaching Team USA in the Deaflympics, he led the American sled hockey team to two Paralympic gold medals.
Three: Sauer nurtured a coaching tree that has some prominent local branches.
One of Sauer’s former assistant coaches, Mark Johnson, oversees the four-time NCAA champion women’s hockey team at Wisconsin. On the other UW bench is first-year head coach Tony Granato and associate head coaches Don Granato and Mark Osiecki, all of whom played for Sauer and the Badgers.
When the new staff was unveiled last March, Sauer was included in the welcoming video and beamed throughout.
“You could see how proud he was,” Tony Granato said.
The roles were reversed last September when Sauer was inducted in the Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame as a host of former players looked on.
“The day resonates with me just because I was able to get there,” said Rob Andringa, whose grew up in Madison and played four years for Sauer.
“It was such a great feeling to see him,” Osiecki said.
Osiecki and Tony Granato had lunch with Sauer in late autumn and the three men spoke enthusiastically about the future. Granato made sure Sauer knew he was welcome to visit the Kohl Center offices or practice any time.
Many colleagues and confidants were stunned by the news of Sauer’s death and its cause, pancreatic cancer. He attended a UW game against Michigan State in early January, but was hospitalized not long after that. …
Sauer was born in Fort Atkinson, graduated from Colorado College in 1965 and spent 31 seasons coaching college hockey at his alma mater and Wisconsin.
He amassed 655 career wins, which ranks among the top 10 all-time, and a program-best 489 victories with the Badgers from 1982 to 2003.
Osiecki said his enduring lesson from Sauer was about psychology.
“Allowing personalities to come out,” he said. “That’s one of the things he did well.
“We always talked about him being a conductor of the orchestra. Knowing what you had in the locker room and never really constricting it so much and let the personalities come out. His teams played to that.”
Osiecki spoke from Minneapolis, where he got the news while having breakfast with his father, Tom. It turns out that Sauer and Tom Osiecki played on the same Twin Cities-based bantam team growing up.
With Sauer behind the bench, Wisconsin won an NCAA title in 1983, but many refused to give him due credit because the roster was comprised of Johnson’s players.
The critics were silent in 1990 when the Badgers swept the Western Collegiate Hockey Association regular-season and playoff crowns on the way to claiming the national championship.
Andringa, Osiecki and Don Granato played on that team. Andringa and Osiecki were defensive partners when UW hammered Colgate 7-3 in the NCAA title game at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. Andringa and Granato were co-captains the following season.
Andringa recounted how emotional Sauer became in the winning dressing room.
“We did this together,” Sauer told them. “You guys deserve this. You are like sons to me.”
Andringa said Sauer was one of those coaches who appeared on the fringe of team pictures, not out front.
“He love being a part of what is special about being on a team and in the locker room,” Andringa said. “That closeness.”
Andringa said one of Sauer’s greatest strengths was “the way he allowed us to be the 20-year-old kid who could make a mistake. He could laugh and joke about a prank.
“He was so good at being in the moment.”
Following an icon like “Badger” Bob Johnson isn’t easy.
“You look at history and I don’t care what sport you pick, there’s not too many people who can succeed after a legend,” Andringa said of Sauer. “He was able to do that.”
Mark Johnson, Bob’s son, was an assistant under Sauer from 1996 to 2002.
“He was a great man and a tremendous ambassador for the game of hockey,” Johnson said. “He’s going to be missed for a lot of reasons.”
Paul Braun was the long-time radio and TV voice of the program. Not long after getting the dreadful news about Sauer he was sifting through hundreds of cassette tapes from UW games long ago, many featuring his good friend and fellow golf aficionado.
“He was one of the classiest people I’ve ever met in my life,” Braun said of Sauer. “A guy who had impeccable integrity.
“What I liked about him was that he was just Jeff. He was the same all the time.”
At one time, Joel Maturi, a former high school basketball coach, was the UW Athletic Department administrator in charge of overseeing men’s hockey. He remembers Sauer ribbing him good-naturedly about his suspect background, but being a patient teacher.
Maturi went on to serve as athletic director at Miami (Ohio), Denver and Minnesota, all hockey-centric schools.
“I owe my career to Jeff Sauer,” Maturi said. “Every place I went from there was because of hockey and because of what I learned from Jeff.”
After his college coaching career ended, Sauer lent his wisdom to WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod, USA Hockey – with former UW player Jim Johannson in a supervisory role – and wound up serving as a mentor to a host of coaches, players and officials at all levels.
Tony Granato said that selfless love of the game is Sauer’s enduring legacy.
“That’s an incredible man,” he said. “After all he had done for so many kids in our program, players and people that he touched, to say, ‘You know what? I have more to give.’
“That’s what makes Jeff Sauer remarkable. It’s the stuff he did for people, period.
“You’re so thankful you had him in your life, but you also wish he could be around here every day to watch and still be a part of it.”
There are certain people (and they know who they are) who never gave Sauer much credit because he didn’t match Johnson’s accomplishments at UW. Well, who could? That’s like saying that Johnson wasn’t as good a coach as Herb Brooks because Johnson only won three NCAA titles and didn’t win Olympic gold.
I had a couple of encounters with Sauer when I was a UW student. I interviewed him once about the crazy possibility of an on-campus arena, which a dozen years (and a $25 million contribution) later became the Kohl Center. Then I interviewed him as a sports intern for a Madison TV station. He was helpful and friendly in both cases.
Being in the UW Band gave me a view of his work during games. He wasn’t a screamer, at least during games. He seemed to be the same whether the Badgers were up or down, which is less entertaining to watch than the screamers, but probably more effective. He also would occasionally crack a smile at some of the Band’s wittier observations about the game.
Unfortunately I was a victim of bad timing in that Sauer won his first national championship the year before I became a UW student, and won his second two years after I graduated. (However, I made the trip to Detroit to see the Badgers brush off Colgate.)
The 1990 Badgers accomplished what only one other UW team did — sweep the WCHA regular-season and tournament championship and the NCAA title.
I also saw him last May, when he spoke to a group of 12-season high school athletes, who played sports in every season in their high school years. He spoke to the students about lessons you learn from sports and what you get from sports (which is less about the accomplishments and more about how you get there). I told him I was a student when Sauer had the only successful major sports program (i.e. program that brought in revenue) at UW.
He was a great ambassador for hockey and for UW.
-
Today in 1959, a few hours after their concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson got on a Beechcraft Bonanza in Mason City, Iowa, to fly to Fargo, N.D., for a concert in Moorhead, Minn.
The trio, along with Dion and the Belmonts, were part of the Winter Dance Party Tour, a 24-city tour over three weeks, with its ridiculously scheduled tour dates connected by bus.
Said bus, whose heater broke early in the tour, froze in below-zero temperatures two nights earlier between the scheduled concert in the Duluth, Minn., National Guard Armory, and the next scheduled location, the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay.
Holly’s drummer had to be hospitalized with frostbite in his feet, and Valens also became ill. The tour got to Green Bay, but its scheduled concert in Appleton that evening was canceled.
After the concert in Clear Lake, Holly decided to rent an airplane. Holly’s bass player, Waylon Jennings, gave his seat to the Big Bopper because he was sick, and Valens won a coin flip with Holly’s guitarist, Tommy Allsup. Dion DiMucci chose not to take a seat because the $36 cost equaled his parents’ monthly rent.
As he was leaving, Holly told Jennings, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up,” to which Jennings replied, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”
Shortly after the 12:55 a.m. takeoff, the plane crashed, instantly killing Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper and the pilot.
The scheduled concert that evening went on, with organizers recruiting a 15-year-old, Robert Velline, and his band the Shadows. Bobby Vee went on to have a good career. So did a teenager in the audience, Robert Zimmerman, who became known a few years later as Bob Dylan.
-
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt:
It is not unprecedented for a White House to view the media as the enemy — the “opposition party,” as presidential adviser Stephen K. Bannon labeled us last week.
But it is vital that we not become that party.
After an exhausting, often alarming first week of the Trump administration, many people were telling journalists that we can no longer conduct business as usual.
“You’re bringing a spoon to a knife fight,” one acquaintance told me.
We need to stop covering the president’s tweets, we were advised. We need to label his false statements as lies. If White House counselors are dishonest, we should stop interviewing them. If Breitbart or parts of Fox peddle Trump propaganda, we should be the voice of the other side.
No. The answer to dishonest or partisan journalism cannot be more partisan journalism, which would only harm our credibility and make civil discourse even less possible. The response to administration insults cannot be to remake ourselves in the mold of their accusations.
Our answer must be professionalism: to do our jobs according to the highest standards, as always.
If the president makes a statement, we report it. If it is false, we report the evidence of its falsehood. If the president’s critics say he is a totalitarian, we report that. If their charge is exaggerated, we provide the evidence of exaggeration. We investigate relentlessly.
So far, I believe The Post has been setting the standard in this difficult job. It is not boasting for me to say so, because as editorial page editor I have no input in The Post’s news coverage. I am only a reader, like all of you.
On the opinion side of the house, which I oversee, we are entitled to our opinions. But here too it is important to maintain a thoughtful perspective.
We on The Post’s editorial page spent the better part of the past two years warning the country not to elect Donald Trump. We said he was unfit by temperament and experience, misguided on many issues and a potential danger to democratic norms.
Now we find ourselves in the unusual position of hoping to be proved wrong.
The opening of the Trump administration has not been encouraging, to put it mildly. But that doesn’t change our mission.
We must distinguish between words and deeds. We must sort the good from the bad. And, in a political culture inclined to view every adverse action as the onset of a potential apocalypse, we must distinguish the merely regrettable from the genuinely harmful, and the genuinely harmful from the irreversibly damaging.
When, as one of his first executive actions, Trump blocked a fee reduction for federally insured mortgages, he was taking a prudent, modest step to protect federal finances, not opening a war on working people.
When Trump ordered the creation of an office to assist the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, he sent an inaccurate message about the prevalence of such crime, but the office itself seems unlikely to do much harm. But barring refugees from war-torn countries, and favoring one religion over another — that defaces our democracy. It betrays a tradition of American generosity and tolerance that we have occasionally strayed from in the past — and always have come to regret doing so.
I am not complacent. There is nothing normal or healthy about a White House counselor telling the media it should “keep its mouth shut” for a while, nor about a president obsessing over his ratings, taunting those he calls his “enemies” and branding journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” Such attitudes should be frightening to all Americans, not just those of us who work in the business.
But we can’t allow ourselves to be brought down to that level. We do not spoil for a knife fight. Whatever comes at us over the next four years, what we should wield is our pens and our laptops, our facts and our fairness.
-
First, to continue a decades-long tradition: It’s a great day for groundhogs. Unless they see their shadow and predict six more weeks of winter, in which case they should be turned into ground groundhog.
Today in 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper all appeared at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
That would be their final concert appearance because of what happened after the concert.
-
Investors Business Daily is surprised about others’ surprise:
Three months ago, Candidate Trump promised that on Day One of his presidency he would, if elected, “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.” President Trump didn’t get around to that until Day Seven, which means he was a week late. Yet everyone is acting as if this all came out of the blue. …
Trump’s actions should not have come as a surprise to anyone who was paying even the slightest attention to the presidential campaign.
Before issuing his Contract With The American Voter in October — in which he listed in detail his plans for his first days in office — Trump regularly promised on the campaign trail to suspend immigration from terror-prone countries, as he did in June when he said he would suspend immigration from countries “where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats.” Trump has promised, too, to halt Syrian refugees, given that ISIS had specifically targeted refugee populations as ways to infiltrate the West.
Obama once even mocked Trump for this, saying last spring that Trump’s travel suspension “doesn’t reflect our democratic ideals.”
Nor is what Trump has done particularly unusual, let alone extreme.
The countries involved in the 90-day suspension — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — weren’t named in Trump’s executive order. They were listed by the Obama administration as countries of special concern under a 2015 law that requires anyone who even visited one of these terror-prone countries to undergo special scrutiny before coming to the U.S. — even if they hail from a country that otherwise doesn’t require a visa to visit the U.S.
President Obama himself barred large groups of immigrants from entering the U.S. at least six times out of national security concerns, according to a review last June by the Washington Examiner. In 2011, the administration suspended refugee processing from Iraq for six months to make sure terrorists weren’t exploiting the program.
The Examiner also found that “President Bill Clinton issued six immigrant bans; George W. Bush six immigrant bans; and former President Ronald Reagan four. And in 1980, former President Jimmy Carter banned Iranians after Tehran seized the U.S. embassy.” …
This has, unfortunately, been the pattern since Trump took the oath of office. All the actions Trump has taken so far are ones he promised months ago to tackle immediately, yet they are all treated as shocking developments.
It is hard to see how Trump’s critics are helping their cause when they react to everything Trump does as if it were a world-ending catastrophe.
For the time being, it seems the stock answer to questions about what Trump is doing may well be: He’s doing what his voters want him to do.
Speaking of Trump’s critics, “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams has an interesting observation:
As a trained persuader, I’m seeing a dangerous situation forming that I assume is invisible to most of you. The setup is that during the presidential campaign Trump’s critics accused him of being Hitler(ish) and they were sure other citizens would see it too, thus preventing this alleged monster from taking office.
They were wrong. The alleged monster took office.
Now you have literally millions of citizens in the United States who were either right about Trump being the next Hitler, and we will see that behavior emerge from him soon, or they are complete morons. That’s a trigger for cognitive dissonance. The science says these frightened folks will start interpreting all they see as Hitler behavior no matter how ridiculous it might seem to the objective observer. And sure enough, we are seeing that.
To be fair, Trump made it easy this week with his temporary immigration ban. If you assume Trump is Hitler, that fits with your hypothesis. But of course it also fits the hypothesis that he’s just doing his job. We’re all seeing what we expect to see.
But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it. Obviously they don’t prefer it in a conscious way. But the alternative to Trump becoming Hitler is that they have to live out the rest of their lives as confirmed morons. No one wants to be a confirmed moron. And certainly not after announcing their Trump opinions in public and demonstrating in the streets. It would be a total embarrassment for the anti-Trumpers to learn that Trump is just trying to do a good job for America. It’s a threat to their egos. A big one.
And this gets me to my point. When millions of Americans want the same thing, and they want it badly, the odds of it happening go way up. You can call it the power of positive thinking. It is also the principle behind affirmations. When humans focus on a desired future, events start to conspire to make it happen.
I’m not talking about any new-age magic. I’m talking about ordinary people doing ordinary things to turn Trump into an actual Hitler. For example, if protesters start getting violent, you could expect forceful reactions eventually. And that makes Trump look more like Hitler. I can think of dozens of ways the protesters could cause the thing they are trying to prevent. In other words, they can wish it into reality even though it is the very thing they are protesting.
In the 3rd dimension of persuasion, the protesters need to be proven right, and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen. So you might see the protesters inadvertently create the police state they fear.
If you are looking for the tells that this dangerous situation is developing, notice how excited/happy the Trump critics seem to be – while angry at the same time – that Trump’s immigration ban fits their belief system. If you see people who are simply afraid of Trump, they are probably harmless. But the people who are excited about any Hitler-analogy-behavior by Trump might be leading the country to a police state without knowing it.
So watch for that.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 