Photo illustration: The Globe and Mail; Source images: Reuters/iStock

Dear Commons Community,

Jane Coaston, host of Opinion’s podcast The Argument, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times entitled, Trumpism Has No Heirs, that examines the state of the Republican Party and where it may be heading in the future.  Her central thesis is that no one can replace Trumpism other than Trump mainly because Trumpism is Trump.  To quote:

“While populist nationalism exists, its existence does not depend on any one individual. Trumpism does. In reality, there is no such thing as Trumpism. “Trumpism” is a retconning of Mr. Trump’s rise to the presidency, a version of the story in which his myriad statements and outbursts and tweets were based on a foundational policy and not on whatever he happened to be thinking about at that moment. What Mr. Trump was for was Donald Trump, and what Trumpism is, is Donald Trump.”

Her conclusion:

“If Mr. Trump were not key to the future of Trumpism, there would be no need to storm the Capitol to attempt to seize an election victory from the jaws of clear defeat. A successor would be found who could carry the mantle without the baggage of being Donald Trump. But a movement conservatism centered on Trumpism is a movement centered on Donald Trump, and no imitation can suffice. So while movement conservatism can center on what it opposes most for now, what movement conservatism is for remains very clear: It is for Donald Trump.”

In a sense, the Republican Party has to define or redefine itself and find new leaders who espouse a conservative Republican philosophy without the Trumpism style/brand OR continue forward with Trump himself!

The entire op-ed is below.

Tony

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 The New York Times

Trumpism Has No Heirs

By Jane Coaston

March 3, 2021

Believe it or not, the Republican Party is ideally positioned for at least the next two years. As the opposition party, it will not be expected to offer solutions to the country’s myriad problems, much less introduce substantive legislation. It will not be expected to do anything except what it does best — oppose the Democratic administration and the Democratic Party.

But the spirit of opposition that much of the Republican Party feels so at home inhabiting exposes the Achilles’ heel of movement conservatism, the weakness that stands to doom the party’s efforts to “move on” from Donald Trump. While many who proudly call themselves conservatives agree about what conservatism is not, there is no such consensus on what conservatism is.

Because of this, even when holding power, movement conservatism is fundamentally an opposition movement. This impulse served it well when it stood in opposition to President Barack Obama, and correspondingly, to everything he seemingly represented. But Donald Trump’s candidacy exploited conservatism’s glaring lack of a central motivating force.

Unlike the 16 candidates he faced during the Republican primary, Mr. Trump grasped the simple idea that many things voters — even in a Republican primary — want may not align with conservative bromides about “personal responsibility” and “limited government.”

“Fiscally conservative” conservatism may hold the idea of government-provided health care or payments aimed at family formation at arm’s length (for fear of “enabling dependency”), but many voters don’t. The conservatism that was seemingly agreed upon by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and National Review was not the conservatism that Mr. Trump sold to the American people.

Mitt Romney campaigned in 2012 on being “severely conservative” and lost. Mr. Trump campaigned on a self-serving redefinition of what it even means to be conservative and won. After all, as Mr. Trump told ABC News in early 2016, “this is called the Republican Party, it’s not called the Conservative Party.”

But what Mr. Trump was for, and what his voters supported, was not the populist nationalism generally associated with “Trumpism.” Populist nationalism has a long history in this country. Paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan, the former Nixon assistant and political commentator, have espoused a blend of America First isolationist foreign policy rhetoric and distrust of perceived culture and political “elites” for decades.

While populist nationalism exists, its existence does not depend on any one individual. Trumpism does. In reality, there is no such thing as Trumpism. “Trumpism” is a retconning of Mr. Trump’s rise to the presidency, a version of the story in which his myriad statements and outbursts and tweets were based on a foundational policy and not on whatever he happened to be thinking about at that moment. What Mr. Trump was for was Donald Trump, and what Trumpism is, is Donald Trump. Put another way: Had Mr. Trump run for the presidency as a “severely conservative” nominee, he probably would have won the nomination just the same.

He did not have a coherent policy platform, because he was the policy platform, the middle finger to perceived enemies and the bulwark against real or imagined progressive assault. Many Republican presidents would have moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or supported a capital-gains tax cut or attempted to wage a Kulturkampf against “cancel culture” or any other wedge issue that provided an unwinnable and unlosable political war to be fought in the Twitter trenches. It is telling that as president, Mr. Trump became a remarkably standard Republican on many issues (his opposition to raising the minimum wage, for example) and received no penalty from his voters or allies. He did not need to fulfill the promises of Trumpism to win their support. He merely needed to be Donald Trump.

Whether movement conservatism can mean more than fealty to Mr. Trump is a question that is important not just to the Republican Party, but also to the future of the country. On “The Argument,” I spoke with The Times’s Ross Douthat and National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty on the possibility of a Trumpism without Trump, but I am dubious about its prospects. Back in 2019, I talked with the conservative writer Rod Dreher, and he told me that unlike any other Republican challenger, Mr. Trump could serve as a “kind of katechon — a force that holds back something much worse.” The word “katechon” originates from the Apostle Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians, featured in the New Testament — where the force is holding back the revelation of the Antichrist. This concept of Trumpism — Trumpism as bulwark — requires Mr. Trump.

Movement conservatism has indeed found a focal point, a forward direction — but it is a person who now serves as the movement’s center of gravity. Polling conducted by CBS News found that 33 percent of Republicans would leave the party for a new party formed by Mr. Trump, and 37 percent said they would “maybe” join. That makes Trumpism — and therefore, Donald Trump — inextricable from the Republican Party. No wonder then that Mr. Trump spent part of his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference excoriating his perceived enemies — other Republicans — to wild applause, making it all the more clear that the Republicans in attendance had chosen between a person and their party.

If Mr. Trump were not key to the future of Trumpism, there would be no need to storm the Capitol to attempt to seize an election victory from the jaws of clear defeat. A successor would be found who could carry the mantle without the baggage of being Donald Trump. But a movement conservatism centered on Trumpism is a movement centered on Donald Trump, and no imitation can suffice. So while movement conservatism can center on what it opposes most for now, what movement conservatism is for remains very clear: It is for Donald Trump.

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning with the provocative title, Why Haven’t More Colleges Closed?  Without a doubt the pandemic has pulled the rug out from many colleges that already were struggling financially and pushed them to the brink.  Prognosticators have been predicting doom, gloom  and mass shutterings. That hasn’t happened, but other enormous changes are underway.  As a side note, 86 colleges have closed or merged since 2016.  The article comments that higher education is proving to be durable and the vast majority of colleges will survive the current crisis.  However, it is still early and we are already seeing dramatic reductions in personnel, proposed consolidations, and significant increases in online instruction. 

The author of the article takes an optimistic view.  Let’s hope she is right!

The entire article is below!

Tony

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

Why Haven’t More Colleges Closed?

By Rebecca S. Natow

March 1, 2021

Last spring’s abrupt, pandemic-induced pivot to virtual learning led to tremendous financial disruption for colleges. The educational technology came with a lofty price tag. So did retrofitting campuses to comply with public-health guidance, with needs for plexiglass dividers, extra campus cleanings, and personal protective equipment — to say nothing of smartphone screening apps and the cost of Covid testing itself.

There were housing refunds to process, reduced revenues from flat or even decreased tuition pricing, and widespread enrollment declines. State governments threatened enormous funding cuts, and sometimes followed through, exacerbating a troubling pre-pandemic trend. The economic losses have been steep — one estimate comes in at $183 billion — and although the federal government has provided stimulus funding with more likely on the way, the amount seems certain to fall far short of the $120 billion advocates sought.

Observers were quick to grasp the enormousness of Covid’s effects on our sector. Last March, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its financial outlook for higher ed, citing the pandemic as a cause for the change. In the pages of The Chronicle and elsewhere, experts like Robert Kelchen, Robert Zemsky, and William R. Doyle sounded dire notes. Existential perils loomed, it seemed; mass college closures appeared imminent. Zemsky told The Wall Street Journal in April that the toll could be as high as 200 closures in a year. In Forbes, Richard Vedder wrote that more colleges were vulnerable to closure now “than at any other time in American history” in an article headlined “Why The Coronavirus Will Kill 500-1,000 Colleges.” Last January, John Kroger, a former president of Reed College, predicted 100 small-college closures over the course of a decade. By May, he had revised that estimate upward: “More than 750 to 1,000” such schools would now “go under.”

Two hundred closures, 500, 1,000 — these predictions steeled us for the worst. So what has the cost been so far? How many colleges have shuttered?

Ten — at least that’s the number of permanent closures or consolidations between the beginning of March 2020 and the end of January 2021 according to Higher Ed Dive, which has been tracking college closure announcements. The prognosticators have been wrong, so far — off by factors of 10 or 20 or nearly 100, though in fairness, some predictions were for longer time periods.

These 10 have been small, private institutions, and were often in deep financial trouble before the pandemic. MacMurray College, in Illinois, said the coronavirus’s disruptions were “not the principal reasons” for closure. Pine Manor College, in Massachusetts, began a phased two-year handoff to Boston College to let current and incoming students avoid disruption. The Pacific Northwest College of Art is on track to become part of nearby Willamette University, in Oregon.

These changes are lamentable for the faculty, staff, students, and administrators directly affected, but collectively they represent more of a glancing blow than the direct asteroid hit many pundits predicted. Why?

First, a few caveats. For one thing, it’s still early. A year is a short amount of time in the lifespan of colleges that have existed, in some cases, for centuries. Closures and consolidations take often years of planning to bring about. Also, the significant federal stimulus to colleges may be propping some up just for now, and a wave of closures is possible if such funding disappears. Still, the fact remains that the pandemic has not driven a large number of colleges past their breaking points, at least not yet.

Some of what’s happening fits a longstanding pattern. Should the past year’s predictions of doom remain off target, they will be in good company. Prognosticators like the late Clayton Christensen and Earl Cheit predicted the demise of large segments of higher ed years ago, to no avail. As it turns out, colleges are remarkably durable.

Before our very eyes we’re witnessing an enormous, slow-motion change.

In a 2017 article in the American Educational History Journal, the University of Memphis associate professor R. Eric Platt and colleagues observed that during the Great Depression, only about 2 percent of U.S. colleges closed, and an even smaller number merged with other institutions. As the American Council on Education’s Phil Muehlenbeck and Karina Pineda wrote in 2019, some of the institutions that struggled in the 1970s, including Boston College and New York University, are now among the nation’s most well-regarded. In a November 2020 study, Robert Kelchen found that among private colleges with risk factors for failure, a wide majority were still operating four years later. The story here is that American colleges are strikingly resilient: Even in extremely grim economic contexts they rarely close — and even when they have the sorts of risk factors associated with closure.

It is true that a large number of for-profit colleges (more than 1,000 according to a 2019 article) have permanently closed in recent years. As relative newcomers to the higher-education sector, for-profit institutions tend not to have the deep roots or many of the institutional trappings possessed by a lot of their nonprofit counterparts, which are factors in institutional longevity. Moreover, for-profit institutions have seen their enrollments rise substantially in recent months, indicating a possible turnaround for the sector that may prevent further closures.

While institutions may survive, not everything about them will. Institutional evolution is an important part of institutional survival. That is, although many more institutions than expected are likely to survive the current crisis, they are also likely to adopt fundamental changes to adapt to resource scarcity, changing markets, and the new competitive environment. As Platt and colleagues have noted, colleges throughout history have survived economic and other crises by rebranding themselves, not infrequently following a merger of two or more institutions into one. For instance, two New Orleans institutions in 1930 merged to rebrand as Dillard University. More recently, Southern New Hampshire University successfully rebranded itself from a small, private, regional college to a global distance-learning provider, enrolling over 130,000 students.

Back in 1990, the economist David W. Breneman observed that liberal-arts colleges had expanded their curricular offerings in response to market pressure to adopt more “professional” degree programs, such as business, education, engineering, and health professions.

In recent decades, increasing numbers of colleges have developed fully online course offerings in response to changing market demands. Some colleges have entered into partnerships with business and industry to help increase enrollments, for example, by providing skills training for employees of corporate partners or by working with external firms that specialize in recruiting and serving international students.

Colleges have also reduced or transformed certain programs and practices in response to evolving environments — as well as to reduce their costs. For example, over the years, the proportion of tenure-line faculty has declined while the proportion of lower-cost contingent faculty has increased. Colleges have also eliminated or restructured departments and degree programs to make their offerings more marketable to prospective students. In short, institutions have proved they are willing to make adjustments, reorganizations, and even substantial cuts to lower expenses and keep up with market demand. This willingness to adapt has no doubt been a factor in keeping many colleges financially afloat.

If history is a guide, the vast majority of colleges will survive the current crisis.

Colleges have generally been reluctant to drift too far from institutionalized practices that have been embraced by the sector for ages, such as tenure. And with good reason: Organizational scholars argue that holding onto such practices provides institutional legitimacy, which can in turn bring more resources to an organization. However, as the examples described above demonstrate, colleges have shown a greater willingness to adapt to new circumstances than stereotypes about the sector’s rigidity and reluctance to change would suggest.

Although most traditional institutions will survive the pandemic largely unscathed, many will adapt to the post-Covid “new normal” by instituting new policies or programs and by eliminating others. For example, Stanford University recently eliminated 11 varsity sports programs; the University of Vermont terminated its entire departments of classics, geology, and religion; and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas recently announced the addition of a new graduate program in cybersecurity, to address a growing demand for technologists. While being among the first to make such changes may invite shock and even resistance, the changes will most likely become more accepted over time — part of the new normal.

Such changes are plenty painful. Sadly, higher education has already experienced a large number of cuts in faculty and staff employment in response to pandemic-related financial losses, both current and projected. Some institutions have cut back on employee retirement benefits. And as noted above, consolidations of two or more colleges have also been announced or are being considered. More cost-saving measures are likely to come, at least until college leaders have more clarity about the market demand for higher education in the months and years ahead.

Institutions are also likely to expand curricular offerings in post-pandemic high-demand fields, such as health professions and technology. Also, because colleges have invested so heavily in distance learning during the pandemic, expect institutions to continue to expand their online course and degree offerings even after the need for socially distant teaching subsides. Before our very eyes, we’re witnessing an enormous, slow-motion change: The academy is becoming a more frugal employer, a more virtual entity, and less of a home to the traditional liberal arts — again, extending trends that were already present before the arrival of Covid.

This, it seems, is change enough for now. If history is a guide, the vast majority of colleges will survive the current crisis, as they have survived many other difficult periods in the past. It will be up to us to ensure that higher-education institutions — in their post-pandemic, altered forms — remain true to the important missions of centering student learning, producing valuable research, and adeptly serving their communities.

FBI Director Chris Wray

Dear Commons Community,

FBI Director Chris Wray condemned the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism” yesterday as he defended the bureau’s handling of intelligence indicating the prospect for violence. He told lawmakers the information was properly shared with other law enforcement agencies even though it was raw and unverified.

Wray’s comments in his first public appearance before Congress since the deadly Capitol attack two months ago amounted to the FBI’s most vigorous defense against the suggestion that it had not adequately communicated to police agencies that there was a distinct possibility of violence as lawmakers were gathering to certify the results of the presidential election.

FBI Director Christopher Wray yesterday also repeatedly shot down claims by Republican allies of former President Donald Trump and others that Antifa activists participated in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

“We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to Antifa in connection with the 6th,” Wray said in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “That doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and we’ll continue to look, but at the moment we have not seen that.”

Wray explained that those who participated in the breach of the Capitol fell into two main groups of violent extremists — those associated with militia groups, such as Oath Keepers, and those who advocate white supremacy.

Wray’s comments came after Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the committee, spent much of his opening remarks focused not on the right-wing extremists who attacked the Capitol in January, but on left-wing extremists, such as the anti-fascist, or Antifa, movement. Grassley referred to how far-left protesters vandalized a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, in the summer and the state Democratic Party headquarters during President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“We must examine the issue of domestic terrorism broadly, very broadly, to include all forms of political extremism, domestic terrorism, wherever it falls on the political spectrum,” Grassley said. “No serious oversight activity and no other policy decisions can be made without doing both.”

Trump and many of his allies have repeatedly claimed that Antifa activists were responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. At a hearing last week, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., read from an article that falsely blamed the violence at the Capitol on Antifa, “fake Trump protesters” and “provocateurs.” A recent Suffolk University/USA Today poll found that 58 percent of Republicans believe the Capitol riot to have been “mostly an Antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement that violence across the political spectrum, including the vandalism at the federal courthouse in Portland, “should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

“But it is not equivalent to a violent attempt to overturn the results of elections, nor is it equivalent to mass shootings targeting minority communities,” he said. “This false equivalency is an insult to the brave police officers who were injured or lost their lives on Jan. 6, as well as dozens of others who’ve been murdered in white supremacist attacks.”

Well-stated Senator Durbin!

Tony

Between 2015 and 2020, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro nearly doubled its number of Black faculty members.

Dear Commons Community,

Most predominantly white colleges have struggled for decades to increase the racial diversity of their faculty members. Overall, people of color make up just over one-fifth of the professoriate, compared with nearly half of undergraduates. 

But the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is on its way to becoming a success story. From 2015 to 2020, the number of Black faculty members there nearly doubled, the number of Hispanic faculty members rose about 50 percent, and the number of Asian faculty members increased by about 25 percent. As a whole, the share of white professors declined to 72 percent from 81 percent.  Sarah Brown in The Chronicle of Higher Education writes how UNC Greensboro diversified its faculty by “years of hard work by faculty members advocating for change in their departments and leadership that makes a real commitment.”  Here is an excerpt from her article.

“There’s no flashy multimillion-dollar campus initiative. No declaration of an ambitious faculty-diversity goal. There’s no chief diversity officer. There’s not even a standalone diversity office. So how did the campus do it?

UNC-Greensboro is in some ways better situated than other colleges for increasing its faculty diversity. Enrollment has been growing, so there have been more opportunities to hire professors. The local population is racially diverse, and so is the student body. But UNC-Greensboro is also a non-flagship public university without lots of money or a huge national brand.

UNC-Greensboro’s success so far proves that diversifying the faculty doesn’t stem from pomp and circumstance. It results from years of hard work by faculty members advocating for change in their departments and leadership that makes a real commitment.

Much of the progress comes down to resource allocation and messaging, says Frank Gilliam, the university’s first Black chancellor, whose tenure began in 2015. If departments want to secure additional funding and resources from the chancellor and the provost, they must, for instance, ensure that their candidate pools are diverse.

“The bus is leaving the station,” Gilliam tells the campus community. “And either you’re on it or you’re not.”

Gilliam’s leadership set a strong tone, but it took many other people to get UNC-Greensboro to where it is now. Like Andrea G. Hunter, a professor of human development and family studies. Hunter is a chancellor’s fellow for campus climate and serves in Gilliam’s cabinet. She spends about half her time working on campus diversity efforts — promoting self-awareness and engagement with anti-racism through workshops and training, determining which campus policies and procedures undermine equity, and ensuring there’s assessment and accountability.

Hunter has seen 20 years of evolution in her department. Progress required curricular reform, training, and a lot of deep, reflective conversations to make sure professors understood the experiences of students and faculty members who didn’t look like them, Hunter says. And it required disrupting the informal practices, such as promoting job openings only within narrow professional networks, that tended to replicate the professors who were already there.

Her department’s faculty is now about one-third people of color, and a Black woman just became the chair. Diversity has made the department better, Hunter says. The quality of the faculty-applicant pool has improved. UNC-Greensboro’s program in human development and family studies is now among the top five nationwide, she says.

Hunter is now trying to promote that kind of change across the campus. She had been in the Faculty Senate leadership for several years, and planned to take a step back from service in 2020. But then Gilliam asked her to serve in this new role right after George Floyd’s death. “I felt the weight of the historical moment,” Hunter says.

Other departments are still lagging behind on racial diversity, but Hunter is optimistic. She wouldn’t have stayed so long, she says, “if I didn’t believe in what was possible here.” Her sense is that people believe in the university’s commitment to racial equity.

That commitment won over Sherine O. Obare, who is the first woman of color ever hired as a dean at UNC-Greensboro. Obare leads the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, which is a partnership with North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black institution in Greensboro. She had gone on campus visits elsewhere, and sometimes felt a wave of tension when she, a Black woman, entered a space. “You can just read the room, and you’re like, Oh, people are just not very comfortable here,” she says.

At UNC-Greensboro, in non-pandemic times, people from different backgrounds sit with one another, having lunch, catching up, talking, laughing, Obare says. There are places for people of different faiths to pray on campus. The university’s Black faculty and staff group frequently hosts brown-bag lunches with no particular agenda — just to create a hangout space. “You just feel like the culture is really inviting and accepting,” she says.

That environment reflects what Gilliam calls “threshold” effects. At a certain point, he says, an institution finally has enough diverse voices that decision-making and culture start to change.

Gilliam draws a distinction between descriptive representation and substantive representation. Descriptive representation, he says, happens when there’s one person of color here, and another one over there. One of them might end up on a committee, on a board, or in the president’s cabinet. In such situations, the best they can typically do is prevent something from happening. They can’t advance any new ideas. Substantive representation, meanwhile, looks more like UNC-Greensboro, he says.

Once that kind of threshold is reached, someone might still be the only Black person in one particular room, whether it’s a classroom or a boardroom. But when that person leaves the room, he or she can see many other Black people elsewhere on campus. That kind of progress, Gilliam says, brings “a tremendous psychic benefit for students and for faculty.”

Excellent example of what can be done when administrators and faculty put their minds to it!

Tony

Andrew Cuomo’s Accusers – Charlotte Bennet, Anna Ruch and Lindsey Boylan

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, another woman reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made unwanted overtures to her. Anna Ruch, became the third woman to publicly accuse Cuomo of offensive behavior, and the first who had not worked as a state government employee. She told The New York Times late Monday that she had met the governor for the first time at a September 2019 wedding reception. She said upon meeting her, Cuomo put his hand on her bare back, which she removed, and then put his hands on her face and asked if he could kiss her.

Michelle Goldberg in her New York Times column this morning poses the question:  “Why Democrats Aren’t Asking Governor Cuomo to resign?”  Goldberg comments that it seems obvious enough that Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York did what his former aide Charlotte Bennett said he did. Bennett, 25, told The New York Times that, among other things, Cuomo asked her if she ever had sex with older men, complained about being lonely and wanting a hug, and said he would date someone in her 20s.  However, it appears that with a few exceptions, Democrats are holding back on exerting significant pressure on Cuomo to resign.  Goldberg speculates that the MeToo  may be waning and that Cuomo’s fate may determine whether there’s still power in this movement.

She also comments:

“… many Democrats are sick of holding themselves to a set of standards that Republicans feel no need to try to meet. Twitter is full of people demanding that the party not “Al Franken” Cuomo, and pointing out that Republicans are taking no steps to investigate alleged sexual harassers in their own ranks, including the freshman congressman Madison Cawthorn. At a certain point, making sacrifices to demonstrate virtue, in the face of an opposition that has none, makes a lot of Democrats feel like suckers.”

Goldberg has a provocative take on the issue.  The media will continue to follow this story closely in the weeks and months to come.

Tony

Getty Image

Dear Commons Community,

I tried to watch Donald Trump’s speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday but turned it off fairly quickly.  I went back to it two or three times and again switched channels to take in Sunday afternoon sports. I found what he said boring and the same old egotistical bluster that led to his LOSS of the presidential election in November 2020.  Taking the stage for the first time since leaving office, he called for GOP unity, even as he exacerbated intraparty divisions by attacking fellow Republicans and promoting lies about the election in a speech that made clear he intends to remain a dominant political force.

Trump blasted his successor, President Joe Biden, and tried to lay out a vision for the future of the GOP that revolves firmly around him.

“Do you miss me yet?” Trump said after taking the stage to his old rally soundtrack and cheers from the supportive crowd.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Trump, in his speech, tried to downplay the civil war gripping the party over the extent to which Republicans should embrace him, even as he unfurled an enemies list, calling out by name the 10 House Republicans and seven GOP senators who voted to impeach or convict him for inciting the U.S. Capitol riot. He ended by singling out Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, who has faced tremendous backlash in Wyoming for saying Trump should no longer play a role in the party or headline the event.

While he insisted the division was merely a spat “between a handful of Washington, D.C., establishment political hacks and everybody else, all over the country,” Trump had a message for the incumbents who had dared to cross him: “Get rid of ’em all.”

The conference, held this year in Orlando instead of the Washington suburbs to evade COVID-19 restrictions, served as a tribute to Trump and Trumpism, complete with a golden statue in his likeness on display. Speakers, including many potential 2024 hopefuls, argued that the party must embrace the former president and his followers, even after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

They also repeated in panel after panel his unfounded claims that he lost reelection only because of mass voter fraud, even though such claims have been rejected by judges, Republican state officials and Trump’s own administration.

Trump, too, continued to repeat what Democrats have dubbed the “big lie,” calling the election “rigged” and insisting that he won in November, even though he lost by more than 7 million votes.

“As you know, they just lost the White House,” he said of Biden, rewriting history.

It is highly unusual for past American presidents to publicly criticize their successors in the months after leaving office. Ex-presidents typically step out of the spotlight for at least a while; Barack Obama was famously seen kitesurfing on vacation after he departed, while George W. Bush said he believed Obama “deserves my silence” and took up painting.

Not Trump.

He delivered a sharp rebuke of what he framed as the new administration’s first month of failures, especially Biden’s approach to immigration and the border.

“Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history,” Trump said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had brushed off the expected criticism last week. “We’ll see what he says, but our focus is certainly not on what President Trump is saying at CPAC,” she told reporters.

Aside from criticizing Biden, Trump used the speech to crown himself the future of the Republican Party, even as many leaders argue they must move in a new, less divisive direction after Republicans lost not just the White House, but both chambers of Congress.

Though Trump has flirted with the the idea of creating a third party, he pledged Sunday to remain part of “our beloved” GOP.

“I’m going to continue to fight right by your side. We’re not starting new parties,” he said. “We have the Republican Party. It’s going to be strong and united like never before.” Yet Trump spent much of the speech lashing out at those he has deemed insufficiently loyal and dubbed “RINOs” — Republican in name only — for failing to stand with him.

“We cannot have leaders who show more passion for condemning their fellow Americans than they have ever shown for standing up to Democrats, the media and the radicals who want to turn America into a socialist country,” Trump said.

Trump did not use his speech to announce plans to run again, but he repeatedly teased the prospect as he predicted a Republican would win back the White House in 2024.

“And I wonder who that will be,” he offered. “Who, who, who will that be? I wonder.”

It remains unclear, however, how much appetite there would be for another Trump term, even in the room of staunch supporters.

The conference’s annual unscientific straw poll of just over 1,000 attendees found that 97% approved of the job Trump did as president. But they were much more ambiguous when asked whether he should run again, with only 68% saying he should.

If the 2024 primary were held today and Trump were in the race, just 55% said they would vote for him, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 21%. Without Trump in the field, DeSantis garnered 43% support, followed by 8% for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and 7% each for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

While he no longer has his social media megaphone after being barred from Twitter and Facebook, Trump had been inching back into public life even before the speech. He called into conservative news outlets after talk radio star Rush Limbaugh’s death and has issued statements, including one blasting Mitch McConnell after the Senate Republican leader excoriated Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. McConnell has since said he would “absolutely” support Trump if he were the GOP nominee in 2024.

At his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump has also been quietly meeting with aides and senior party leaders as he builds his post-presidential political operation. While he has already backed several pro-Trump candidates, including one challenging an impeachment supporter, aides have been working this past week to develop benchmarks for those seeking his endorsement to make sure the candidates are serious and have set up full-fledged political and fundraising organizations before he gets involved.

They are also planning a new super PAC that could raise unlimited amounts of money, though one aide cautioned they were still deciding whether to create a new entity or repurpose an existing America First super PAC.

Trump hinted at the effort Sunday, voicing his commitment to helping elect Republicans and calling on attendees to join him.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we begun together … is far from being over,” he said.

Trump should stay at Mar-a-Lago (if the town will have him), play golf, and let the Republican Party find itself again!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo yesterday apologized for comments that “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation” and, following pressure from fellow Democrats, agreed to refer matters of sexual harassment to the state attorney general’s office.  As reported by NBC News.

“At work sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are funny,” he said, adding, “I mean no offense and only attempt to add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business.”

“I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended,” he continued. “I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”

The statement comes after former Cuomo aide Charlotte Bennett, 25, told The New York Times that Cuomo made several inappropriate remarks about her sex life, which she said she interpreted as an overture. Cuomo denied the allegations, which NBC News has not independently reported, by saying he “never made advances toward Ms. Bennett nor did I ever intend to act in any way that was inappropriate.”

Bennett’s allegation is the second a former aide has levied against Cuomo since December. Last week, Lindsey Boylan, a deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to Cuomo from 2015 to 2018, expanded on a December tweet saying Cuomo “sexually harassed me for years.” In an essay posted Wednesday on Medium, Boylan detailed her experience, which she said included an unwanted kiss from Cuomo. In a statement to NBC New York, Cuomo spokesperson Caitlin Girouard said, “There is simply no truth to these claims.”

Yesterday, Cuomo said: “To be clear I never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to.”

The statement came amid a back-and-forth Sunday between the governor’s office and New York Attorney General Letitia James over the parameters of an investigation into the matter. His office on Saturday appointed a former federal judge to review the allegations, but top Democrats, including James, said Cuomo hadn’t gone far enough to ensure the independence of the inquiry into the claims.

The governor’s office changed course yesterday, announcing that it was asking the state’s attorney general and its chief judge to appoint an independent investigator to examine allegations of sexual harassment against him. But James said later that she didn’t accept the proposal, as it wouldn’t give her office full authority over the process.

“While I have deep respect for Chief Judge DiFiore, I am the duly elected attorney general and it is my responsibility to carry out this task,” she said in a statement. “The governor must provide this referral so an independent investigation with subpoena power can be conducted.” Janet DiFiore is chief judge of the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

Just prior to the release of Cuomo’s statement, Cuomo’s office said that it would ask Attorney General Tish James to “select a qualified private lawyer to do an independent review of allegations of sexual harassment.”

James confirmed later Sunday evening that the referral was “in line with our demands and New York state law.”

“This is not a responsibility we take lightly,” she said. “We will hire a law firm, deputize them as attorneys of our office, and oversee a rigorous and independent investigation.”

Within the past 24 hours, a number of prominent Democrats had called for such an independent investigation following the allegations, criticizing the prob Cuomo initially announced.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement, “Sen. Schumer has long believed sexual harassment is never acceptable and must not be tolerated, and that allegations should be thoroughly and independently investigated.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Sunday also called for “an independent, transparent and swift investigation into these serious and deeply concerning allegations.” She later clarified that James’ office should solely handle the review.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, tweeted Sunday: “Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett’s detailed accounts of sexual harassment by Gov. Cuomo are extremely serious and painful to read. There must be an independent investigation — not one led by an individual selected by the Governor, but by the office of the Attorney General.”

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden believes Bennett and Boylan “should be treated with respect and dignity.”

“There should be an independent review of these allegations,” she said. “They’re serious. It was hard to read that story as a woman. And that process should move forward as quickly as possible, and that’s something we all support and the president supports.”

This is tough love for Governor Cuomo!

Tony