Category Archives: Michelle Goldberg

Michelle Goldberg | Impeachment’s Over. Bring On the Criminal Investigations. – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

“A few hours after the Senate voted in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Saturday, I spoke to the lead impeachment manager, Jamie Raskin. He was crushingly disappointed. Despite Republicans’ indulgence of Trump over the last five years, despite the fact that three Republican senators met with Trump’s lawyers before they presented their defense, Raskin had so much faith in the overwhelming case he and his colleagues brought that, until the end, he held out hope of conviction.

“I’ve always been seen as a rose-colored-glasses guy,” he said. Raskin’s openhearted belief that Senate Republicans maintained a remnant of patriotic solidarity with their fellow citizens is part of what made his presentation so effective; he threw himself into it without fatalism or cynicism.

The House managers forced the Senate to reckon with the scale of the terror Trump unleashed on Congress. “I did see a bunch of the Republicans who voted against us, including Mitch McConnell, crying at different points,” said Raskin. The case was strong enough to win over even two Republican senators, Richard Burr and Bill Cassidy, who’d initially voted against holding the trial at all.

But when it comes to McConnell and his caucus, cynicism always prevails.” . . .

David Lindsay Jr.
Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:
Thank you Michelle Goldberg. This piece is flawless and sensational. It feels to like the best of your many good pieces, and probably the best. Your opening, about the big uncynical Jamie Raskin, believing he could turn the stone hearted Republicans to do their duty, had me close to tears. The top commenters loved this too. You took my breath away with your indictment and praise of Mitch McConnell: “The senator’s excoriation could have doubled as the House managers’ closing summation. To Raskin and the eight other managers, McConnell’s speech was at once a vindication and an insult, showing that they’d proved their case, and that it didn’t matter. McConnell voted to acquit on a manufactured technicality, arguing that a former president is “constitutionally not eligible for conviction.” His bad faith is awe-inspiring; it was he who refused to move forward with a trial while Trump was still in office. With his split-the-baby solution to Trump’s manifest guilt, McConnell seemed to be trying to stay on the right side of his caucus while calming corporate donors who’ve cut off politicians who supported the insurrectionists. But — and here’s the imprtant part — McConnell signaled openness to Trump’s prosecution in other forums. “He didn’t get away with anything yet — yet,” said McConnell. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”
Let the courts go after the con & bully.

Michelle Goldberg | You May Want to Forget Him, but Trump’s Trial Must Be Thorough – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

“Here’s a confession: I’m dreading the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which begins on Tuesday. There are some nihilists who miss the former president’s presence in the news cycle, or who think others do, but I hated the last five years and am relieved that it’s over and he’s gone.

The Senate trial will almost certainly not bring justice, because Republican senators make up half the jury, and even if many of them privately disapprove of Trump’s insurrectionary attempts to cling to office, their base does not. If this process drags on, it will slow the urgent work of passing an economic rescue package, increasing human suffering and possibly the chance that the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene will retake the House in the midterms.

Yet it is still crucial that when the Senate trial commences this week, the House impeachment managers take all the time they need to make their case.

According to Politico, there’s tension between several managers, who reportedly want to call witnesses, and senior Democrats who just want to get the trial over with. The desire to rush is understandable, because Democrats are sacrificing valuable legislative time. But if they miss the opportunity to give the country the fullest possible picture of Trump’s treachery, that sacrifice will be in vain.

Perhaps it goes without saying that the real jury for this trial is not the Senate but the public. Most Americans have decided on Trump’s guilt: according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, 56 percent say Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again. But it’s still important for Democrats to tell the comprehensive story of how Trump tried to steal the election, and how that attempt ended in death and desecration.

This is necessary not just to cement Trump’s disgrace, but because his election lies are being used to justify new restrictions on voting. Trump’s attack on democracy didn’t begin on Jan. 6, and even though he’s out of office, it hasn’t ended.” . . .

Thank you Michelle Goldberg for this excellent and inspiring piece. It reminds me of my own fickle convictions. I was moved by the following comment, to remember a position I had months ago, that now seems timely, serious, and potent.

Richard Blaine
Not NYCFeb. 8
Times Pick

Over 100 Police were sent to hospital. 5 people died. . The Republicans effectively sought to impeach Bill Clinton for receiving oral sex in the Oval Office. . But inciting an insurrection isn’t enough? . Pressuring electoral officials to steal an election isn’t enough? . If that doesn’t merit conviction, then what does? . The GOP ran endless sessions on Sec. Clinton’s e-mails and “Benghazi”. Now they want this trial to end immediately. The Democrats should not do them that favor. . They should conduct a methodical, thorough investigation. Subpoena the man, and force him to obey the rules. For once. . They should take evidence from every witness. review every document, e-mail, text, and video. . If it takes two years, it takes two years. It took Watergate a long time to build momentum. . The Democrats should keep at it. Until the man’s support evaporates. Until Republican Senators are no longer afraid. Until the Republicans can no longer face the daily water torture of another disclosure, each worse than the last. Until the Republicans stop their bad-faith posturing and denial. Until they learn the meaning of shame. . Until the Republicans are so desperate to end the trial that they admit the truth, and vote unanimously to convict. . Get to the bottom of this, no matter how long it takes. It is about the Rule of Law and the survival of Democracy. . Nothing is more important.

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Michelle Goldberg | QAnon Believers Are Obsessed With Hillary Clinton. She Has Thoughts. – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; photo by Eric Thayer for The New York Times

“A clear indication that Marjorie Taylor Greene was more than a dabbler in QAnon was her 2018 endorsement of “Frazzledrip,” one of the most grotesque tendrils of the movement’s mythology. You “have to go down a number of rabbit holes to get that far,” said Mike Rothschild, whose book about QAnon, “The Storm Is Upon Us,” comes out later this year.

The lurid fantasy of Frazzledrip refers to an imaginary video said to show Hillary Clinton and her former aide, Huma Abedin, assaulting and disfiguring a young girl, and drinking her blood. It holds that several cops saw the video, and Clinton had them killed.

When Greene posted a picture of Donald Trump with the mother of the slain N.Y.P.D. officer Miosotis Familia on Facebook, one of her commenters described Frazzledrip and wrote, “This was another Hillary hit.” Greene replied, “Yes Familia,” then continued, “I post things sometimes to see who knows things. Most the time people don’t. I’m glad to see your comment.”

Contemplating Frazzledrip, it occurred to me that QAnon is the obscene apotheosis of three decades of Clinton demonization. It’s other things as well, including a repurposed version of the old anti-Semitic blood libel, which accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their rituals, and a cult lusting for mass public executions. According to the F.B.I., it’s a domestic terror threat.

But QAnon is also the terminal stage of the national derangement over Clinton that began as soon as she entered public life. “It’s my belief that QAnon really took off because it was based on Hillary Clinton,” said Rothschild. “It was based specifically on something that a lot of 4chan dwellers wanted to see happen, which was Hillary Clinton arrested and sort of dragged away in chains.”

I was curious what Clinton thinks about all this, and it turns out she’s been thinking about it a lot. “For me, it does go back to my earliest days in national politics, when it became clear to me that there was a bit of a market in trafficking in the most outlandish accusations and wild stories concerning me, my family, people that we knew, people close to us,” she told me.”  . . .

“. . .  Looking back to the 1990s, it’s easy to see QAnon’s antecedents. In “Clinton Crazy,” a 1997 New York Times Magazine story, Philip Weiss delved into the multipronged subculture devoted to anathematizing the first couple. He described “freelance obsessives, the people for whom the Internet was invented, cerebral hobbyists who have glimpsed in the Clinton scandals a high moral drama that might shake society to its roots.”

The people Weiss wrote about targeted both Clintons, but there was always a special venom reserved for Hillary, seen as a feminist succubus out to annihilate traditional family relations. An attendee at the 1996 Republican National Convention told the feminist writer Susan Faludi, “It’s well-established that Hillary Clinton belonged to a satanic cult, still does.” Running for Congress in 2014, Ryan Zinke, who would later become Trump’s secretary of the interior, described her as “the Antichrist.” (He later said he was joking.) Trump himself called Clinton “the Devil.”

For Clinton, these supernatural smears are part of an old story. “This is rooted in ancient scapegoating of women, of doing everything to undermine women in the public arena, women with their own voices, women who speak up against power and the patriarchy,” she said. “This is a Salem Witch Trials line of argument against independent, outspoken, pushy women. And it began to metastasize around me.” In this sense, Frazzledrip is just a particularly disgusting version of misogynist hatred she’s always contended with.” . . .  

Opinion | Don’t Buy John Bolton’s Book. But Don’t Ignore Its Revelations. – By Michelle Goldberg – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“The American news cycle has become so manic and surreal that there hasn’t been much time to reflect on the revelation, in the new book by the former national security adviser John Bolton, that Donald Trump encouraged President Xi Jinping of China in the building of concentration camps for its Muslim Uighur minority.

Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened,” which I received this week in advance of its release on Tuesday, describes a conversation Trump had with Xi at the opening dinner of the Group of 20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, with only their interpreters present: “Xi explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

It is impossible, at this late date, to be shocked by the behavior of our depraved president. Nor is it surprising, given Trump’s treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, that he is pro-concentration camp.

But Americans should know that China’s detention of over a million people largely on religious grounds — a project that reports say includes torture, sterilization and forcing Uighur women to sleep with members of China’s Han majority to promote “ethnic unity” — is happening with our president’s behind-the-scenes approval. (In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump denied the account in Bolton’s book.)”

“. . . .  All the same, there is information here that deserves whatever attention people can muster in the midst of plague and mass protest. Bolton provides, albeit belatedly, firsthand confirmation that Trump did exactly what he was impeached for — leveraging American military aid in exchange for Ukraine’s help in smearing Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden: “Aug. 20, I took Trump’s temperature on the Ukraine security assistance, and he said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over,” Bolton writes.

Such behavior was nothing new for Trump; earlier Bolton describes him “pleading with Xi” for help in the 2020 election by making agricultural purchases from farm states. Though Bolton writes that the government’s pre-publication reviewers prevented him from using Trump’s exact words, Vanity Fair saw an unredacted version of the passage: “Make sure I win. I will probably win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms. … Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win.”

That Bolton did not testify to this earlier is to his immense disgrace. But it is a national disgrace that his confirmation of the Democrats’ impeachment case probably won’t matter, so inured are Republicans to staggering corruption.

Bolton’s warning to his ideological allies should be heeded, though it won’t be. Should Trump win in 2020, he writes, “conservatives and Republicans should worry about the removal of the political guardrail of Trump having to face re-election.”

Don’t buy this book. John Bolton doesn’t deserve to be rewarded for withholding testimony he had a duty to provide months ago. But don’t dismiss it either. The president cheered China’s concentration camps. At this point in the Trump era, it’s a constant challenge not to let oneself be bored by evil.”

Opinion | What to Do With Tara Reade’s Allegation Against Joe Biden? – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“It would be easier to know what to do with Tara Reade’s accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her if her tale were more solid, or if it were less.

In the past few days, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press all reported on a story that’s been circulating through the left- and right-wing media for the last few weeks. Reade, a staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s, is one of the women who last year spoke out about Biden’s handsiness. When The A.P. interviewed Reade last April, she said that Biden “rubbed her shoulders and neck” and “played with her hair.”

She also told The Union, a California newspaper, last year that she didn’t feel sexualized. “She instead compared her experience to being a lamp,” the paper reported. She told the reporter, Alan Riquelmy: “‘It’s pretty. Set it over there.’ Then when it’s too bright, you throw it away.”

But last month, in an interview with the left-wing podcast host Katie Halper, Reade added new, more serious details to her story, claiming that Biden pushed her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers. (The Biden campaign has said, “This absolutely did not happen.”)”

David Lindsay:  I’m disappointed that Michelle Goldberg thinks this story and accusation are worthy of the space she gave it. It appears as at least possible, that Goldberg is the stooge of a Russian plant

Opinion | Elizabeth Warren Is the Democrats’ Unity Candidate – By Michelle Goldberg – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Nick Oxford for The New York Times

“Over the weekend, a minor conflict broke out between the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, longtime friends who have, until now, seemed to operate under an unspoken nonaggression pact.

It started when Politico reported on a script that Sanders volunteers had been given to persuade voters leaning toward other candidates. Warren backers, the script said, are “highly educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what” and that she’s “bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party.”

Attacking another candidate’s supporters rather than her record is kind of obnoxious, but as far as political combat goes, it was pretty mild. The reason it caused a small uproar is that in much of the Democratic Party, there’s tremendous resentment of Sanders left over from 2016. Many believe he weakened Hillary Clinton by dragging out the primary — at one point even threatening a contested convention — and then only halfheartedly rallying his fans behind her when it was over. Warren alluded to this anger in a fund-raising email keyed to the Politico article that said, “We can’t afford to repeat the factionalism of the 2016 primary.” “

David Lindsay Jr.
Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:
So much misguided, uniformed, optimism. I don’t argue about Elizabeths outstanding qualities, you are all right about that. But she is not, and will not, be my candidate, when she loses the polls by Nate Cohn etc, as described by David Leonhardt, in the swing states that supported Trump.
The polls of the places that should matter to the most of us, in the 6 red swing states that handed Trump the electoral colllege over the extraodinairy Hillary Clinton, when last reviewed, showed that Joe Biden beats Trump there, and Warren doesn’t.
(David blogs at InconvenientNews.net.)

Just How Corrupt Is Bill Barr? By Michelle Goldberg – NYT

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By Michelle Goldberg    Opinion Columnist 

“By now you have probably read the opening of the whistle-blower complaint filed by a member of the intelligence community accusing Donald Trump of manipulating American foreign policy for political gain. But the whistle-blower’s stark, straightforward account of stupefying treachery deserves to be repeated as often as possible.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistle-blower wrote. “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

Under any conceivable ethical standard, Barr should have recused himself. But ethical standards, perhaps needless to say, mean nothing in this administration.

In the Ukraine scandal, evidence of comprehensive corruption goes far beyond Trump. Former prosecutors have said that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, may have been part of a criminal conspiracy when he pressed Ukrainian officials to open an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Vice President Mike Pence is also tied to the shakedown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, having met with him this month to talk about “corruption” and American financial aid. When this administration complains about Ukrainian “corruption,” it almost inevitably means a failure to corruptly pursue investigations that would bolster conspiracy theories benefiting Trump.”

 

Opinion | Trump’s Anti-Abortion Incitement – By Michelle Goldberg – The New York Times

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The president’s lies about infanticide could inspire violence.

By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist

April 29, 2019, 858

President Trump on Saturday in Green Bay, Wis., where he described Democrats as in favor of infanticide.
Credit
Erin Schaff/The New York Times

“Last week, The Washington Post’s tally of Donald Trump’s false and misleading claims hit a milestone, topping 10,000. His untruths, which lately average almost two dozen a day, have long since stopped being news, becoming instead irritating background noise. So when, on Saturday, he told a particularly lurid lie about infanticide at a political rally in Wisconsin, it was, like so much in this administration, at once shocking and unsurprising.

As his raucous crowd booed and screamed, Trump described a hideous scenario that he insists Democrats approve of. “The baby is born,” said Trump. “The mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully” — at this, he seemed to mime rocking an infant — “and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” He made a chopping motion with his hand.

Trump was elaborating on the willfully misunderstood words of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, who, in a radio interview in January, responded to a Republican hypothetical about a woman requesting an abortion during labor. A pediatric neurologist by training, Northam described what actually occurs when a woman whose pregnancy may not be viable gives birth. If “a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” he said. “The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.””

Opinion | The Wrong Time for Joe Biden – By Michelle Goldberg – The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

  • 1944
  • Joe Biden’s history of being physically affectionate puts him out of step with the mores of an increasingly progressive Democratic Party.CreditSaul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

“On Friday, Lucy Flores, a former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of Nevada, accused Joe Biden of touching her inappropriately as they waited to take the stage at a 2014 election rally. He put his hands on her shoulders, she said, then nuzzled her hair and kissed the back of her head. She didn’t accuse Biden, who is reportedly close to announcing his presidential candidacy, of sexual harassment or assault, just of making her uncomfortable. “I’m not suggesting that Biden broke any laws, but the transgressions that society deems minor (or doesn’t even see as transgressions) often feel considerable to the person on the receiving end,” she wrote.

In response, Biden released a statement saying that while he’s often been physically affectionate as a politician, “not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately.”

Then, on Monday, Amy Lappos, a former aide to the Democratic congressman Jim Himes, told The Hartford Courant that Biden pulled her toward him to rub noses during a 2009 fund-raiser. “There’s absolutely a line of decency,” Lappos said, adding: “Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It’s not cultural. It’s not affection. It’s sexism or misogyny.” Biden’s campaign hadn’t yet begun and was already in crisis.”

David Lindsay:  This is a weak piece, and there are some very good female feminists who in the comments come articulately to Joe Biden’s defense on the handsyness.

But, There is an important  comment I couldn’t ignore. It is the comment which caused me to remove Joe Biden from my official short list, and replace him with Bernie Sanders.

While I supported Biden as highly electable, he has been too wrong on too many important issues, especially climate change, student debt,  and Anita Hill.

ScottW
Chapel Hill, NCApril 1
He voted for the war in Iraq. He pushed Clarence Thomas through the Senate confirmation hearings. He supported a bill that makes it impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.

He has not been a leader on Medicare for All. He has not led on increasing the minimum wage. He has not been a leader on climate change legislation.

He has had his shot at running for President and needs to step aside.

24 Replies1133 Recommended

Opinion | Howard Schultz- Please Don’t Run for President – By Michelle Goldberg – The New York Times

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Michelle Goldberg
By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist

Jan. 28, 2019, 1095
Howard Schultz, the former chief executive of Starbucks, says he is considering running for president as a “centrist independent.”
Credit
Alex Wong/Getty Images

“Unlike Donald Trump, the former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz is a genuinely successful businessman who built a company that’s become part of the daily lives of people across America. For this, those of us who are horrified by Trump’s relentless grifting should be grateful. It gives us something concrete to boycott should Schultz decide to launch a narcissistic spoiler campaign for president.

In an interview with Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Schultz decried “extremes on both sides” and said he’s considering a run for president as a “centrist independent.” He hasn’t yet made up his mind, and perhaps the overwhelmingly negative reaction from almost all segments of the Democratic Party, as well as some NeverTrump Republicans, will dissuade him. There’s a danger, though, that the reality-distorting effects of being a billionaire will warp his judgment, convincing him that his business acumen is transferable to the realm of politics. If so, he could end up helping Donald Trump get re-elected.

Shultz appears to share the conviction, endemic among American elites, that the country hungers for a candidate who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative. After all, if you’re rich, you probably know a lot of people like this. “I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House,” a chief executive of a major bank, who wanted to remain anonymous, recently told Politico, lamenting Michael Bloomberg’s poor odds in a Democratic primary.

But this frustrated executive’s politics aren’t widely shared by people who haven’t been to Davos. In a 2017 study, the political scientist Lee Drutman plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes, one dealing with social issues and identity, the other with economics and trade. Only 3.8 percent of voters fell into the socially liberal/economically conservative quadrant.”

David Lindsay:

“Only 3.8 percent of voters fell into the socially liberal/economically conservative quadrant.”   That would include me. I didn’t realize I was in such a small group of smart, compassionate people. But for me, economic conservativism is not agains the New Deal, or the Great Society, or the New Green Deal that includes population control.