Dear Commons Community,

Russia is recruiting Syrians to fight on its behalf in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official said yesterday.

“It is not clear to us whether they’ve set a quota for that and what that would be or how many they’ve gotten so far,” the unnamed official told reporters in a press briefing, according to Axios. “But we can corroborate reports that the Russians are trying to supplement their fighters with foreign fighters.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported the development on Sunday, saying Russia was recruiting Syrians with expertise in urban combat as the invasion reportedly stretched longer than Putin expected, stymied by a fierce resistance from Ukrainians seeking to defend their country.

The defense official told reporters that the Pentagon found it “noteworthy” that Putin “believes he needs to rely on foreign fighters to supplement what is a very significant commitment of combat power inside Ukraine as it is.”

The official said the Kremlin had already committed nearly 100% of the 150,000 troops amassed along the Ukrainian border since the invasion began last month.

“They continue to be frustrated by a stiff Ukrainian resistance, as well as their own internal challenges,” the defense official said.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told The New York Times this week that U.S. analysts don’t have any details about the number of Syrians Russia has recruited or whether they may already be in Ukraine.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that Russian forces likely made “minimal ground advances” over the weekend and that it was highly unlikely the Kremlin had achieved its military objectives to date.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rallied his country in an address from his office in Kyiv on Monday night, saying the country would rebuild itself after it repelled the invading forces.

“There will be no trace of the enemy,” he said. “We will make our cities destroyed by the invader better than any city in Russia.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning featuring four Russian oligarchs  who have made major donations to American colleges and universities. The United States and the European Union have set their sights on them as one focus of economic sanctions amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. By targeting the oligarchs in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, the sanctions have already cost Russian billionaires more than $80 billion in wealth, Bloomberg News reported.

A small handful of Russian billionaires and others whose business interests lie in Russia — and who have not been targeted by recent sanctions — have given money to American colleges. Though calls to sever ties with these wealthy donors have not reached the fever pitch that has plagued controversial philanthropists in recent years, the size of some of their donations is substantial. The donors are not among the U.S.’s most recent additions to its list of sanctioned actors, but some have been sanctioned before or their companies have appeared on sanctions lists.  Below are brief bios as published by The Chronicle.

Tony

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Leonid Mikhelson

Leonid Mikhelson is the founder and chairman of the natural gas company Novatek and is worth an estimated $21.1 billion, according to Forbes. Mikhelson does not appear on the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions list, but the United States sanctioned Novatek in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Between 2012 and 2014, Mikhelson gave $4.3 million to New York University, according to disclosures by NYU to the Department of Education. The Financial Times reported that his daughter studied art history at the university. Mikhelson is also a prolific art collector and has funded international art exhibitions, the FT reported. Through his foundation, V-A-C — or Victoria, the Art of being Contemporary — Mikhelson also gave $500,000 to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that in response to the war in Ukraine, Italy had put a hold on its plans to partly finance a $21-billion project led by Novatek. According to Bloomberg, Mikhelson has already lost $10.2 billion of his wealth in 2022.

“We strongly support every diplomatic effort at restoring peace and look forward to the prompt resolution of this current tragic situation,” Novatek said on its website. “We also extend our sincere sympathy to all those affected by these events.”

Leonard Blavatnik

Leonard Blavatnik emigrated to the United States in 1978 and holds both American and British citizenship, and graduate degrees from Columbia and Harvard Universities. According to his website, he founded a private company in 1986 that invests in media, real estate, and natural-resources companies, among other industries. According to a 2019 profile of Blavatnik in the Financial Times, his company at that time owned a financial stake in Sual Partners, which owned a large stake in the Russian aluminum company Rusal. The company was sanctioned in 2018, then removed from the sanctions list the following year. Blavatnik donated $6.35 million to Republican political action committees during the 2015-16 campaign cycle, according to The Dallas Morning News. Between 2017 and 2019, the Blavatnik Family Foundation gave over $131.4 million to American colleges and academic medical centers, according to files submitted to the IRS. They include Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown Universities, and Miami University of Ohio, among others. Blavatnik has not been sanctioned by the U.S.

“Len Blavatnik, born in Odessa, Ukraine, has been an American citizen for almost 40 years, having earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School,” said a statement from his company, Access Industries. “As head of a U.S.-based business and philanthropist, he has long recognized the value of higher education and has made donations, and continues to do so, through the Blavatnik Family Foundation to institutions to advance scientific innovation and discovery.”

Oleg Deripaska

Oleg Deripaska, a founder of Rusal, was one of seven Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2018, along with the companies they own. A 2008 story in Harper’s Magazine reported that Deripaska made a contribution to Harvard, which earned him a position as an International Council Member at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Deripaska is no longer a member of the council, but in 2015, the Belfer Center noted on its website that he was “a key figure in modernizing Russia’s industry” and said that he “strives to drive up corporate governance and environmental standards in his businesses.” A Harvard spokesperson said that he has not been on the Belfer Center’s International Council since 2017 and has not had any ties to the university since then.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Deripaska told attendees of a conference that the only way out of the current economic crisis was ending fighting in Ukraine, saying, “The main and first step is achieving peace on a compromise basis.”

Viktor Vekselberg

Viktor Vekselberg also holds a large stake in Rusal. Like Deripaska, he was sanctioned in 2018 by the Treasury Department. Vekselberg served as a trustee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for at least three years ending in 2018. Before then, he was president of the Skolkovo Foundation, which partnered with MIT to create the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, a graduate research university near Moscow. MIT ended its relationship with the Skolkovo Institute in February because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vekselberg is still the chairman of the Russian institute’s board of trustees.

MIT did not respond to a request for comment. The university said on its website that its withdrawal from the Skolkovo Institute was “a rejection of the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine” and that it was proud of its previous work with the institute.

“We take it with deep regret because of our great respect for the Russian people and our profound appreciation for the contributions of the many extraordinary Russian colleagues we have worked with,” the statement said.

Dear Commons Community,

Former Attorney General is making the media rounds promoting his new book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.  Last night I watched his one-hour interview (see highlights above) with NBC’s Lester Holt where he promoted his book and insisted that he was not a toady for President Trump.  He discussed Robert Mueller, the 2020 election, his resignation as attorney general, etc.  He equivocated for most of his responses to Holt.  Below is a review of his book by Jeffrey Toobin in which the interview with Holt is mentioned.

We keep getting these insider memoirs from former Trump appointees and aides.  I wish more of them spoke up in public during their service to the country.  Bottom line – Barr and most of them were toadies!

Tony
—————————————————–

The New York Times

William P. Barr’s Good Donald Trump and Bad Donald Trump

By Jeffrey Toobin

March 5, 2022

ONE DAMN THING AFTER ANOTHER
Memoirs of an Attorney General
By William P. Barr

It’s a rare Washington memoir that makes you gasp in the very second sentence. Here’s the first sentence from William P. Barr’s “One Damn Thing After Another,” an account of his two turns as attorney general: “The first day of December 2020, almost a month after the presidential election, was gray and rainy.” Indeed it was. Here’s the second: “That afternoon, the president, struggling to come to terms with the election result, had heard I was at the White House. …” Uh, “struggling to come to terms with”? Not exactly. How about “struggling to overturn the election he just lost” or “struggling to subvert the will of the voters”? Maybe “struggling to undermine American democracy.”

Such opening vignettes serve a venerable purpose in the Washington memoir genre: to show the hero speaking truth to power. Barr had just told a reporter that the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” This enraged the president. “You must hate Trump,” Trump told Barr. “You would only do this if you hate Trump.” But Barr stood his ground. He repeated that his team had found no fraud in the election results. (This is because there was none.) By the end of the book, Barr uses the election controversy as a vehicle for a novel interpretation of the Trump presidency: Everything was great until Election Day, 2020. As Barr puts it, “In the final months of his administration, Trump cared only about one thing: himself. Country and principle took second place.” For Barr, it was as if this great president experienced a sudden personality transplant. “After the election,” Barr writes, “he was beyond restraint. He would only listen to a few sycophants who told him what he wanted to hear. Reasoning with him was hopeless.”

The heart of “One Damn Thing After Another” concerns the earlier days of Trump’s presidency when, apparently, “country and principle” took first place. In his December confrontation with Trump, Barr recalls a comment that may be more revealing than he intends: “‘No, Mr. President, I don’t hate you,’ I said. ‘You know I sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged.’”

This, as the rest of the book makes clear, is the real reason Barr came out of a comfortable retirement in early 2019 to serve as Jeff Sessions’s successor as attorney general. Barr — who thought Trump was “being wronged” by the investigation into the 2016 election led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel — wanted to come to Trump’s defense. Barr refers to the allegations that Trump colluded with the Russians in the lead-up to the election as, variously, the “Russiagate lunacy,” the “bogus Russiagate scandal,” “the biggest political injustice in our history” and the “Russiagate nonsense” (twice). Barr was as good as his word and sought to undermine Mueller and protect Trump at every opportunity. As Barr reveals in his book, Trump first asked him to serve on his defense team, but Barr later figured he could do more good for the president as attorney general. He was right.

Throughout, Barr affects a quasi-paternal tone when discussing Trump, as if the president were a naughty but good-hearted adolescent. When Trump says repeatedly that he fired the F.B.I. director James Comey because of the Russia investigation, Barr spins it as, “Unfortunately, President Trump exacerbated things himself with his clumsy miscues, notably making imprecise comments in an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt and joking around with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador the day after firing Comey.” The just-joking defense is a favorite for Barr, as it is for the former president. In a strikingly humorless book, there is one “funny” line from Trump: “‘Do you know what the secret is of a really good tweet?’ he asked, looking at each of us one by one. We all looked blank. ‘Just the right amount of crazy,’ he said.” (Rest assured that Barr says the president spoke “playfully.”)

During his confirmation hearing, Barr promised to make Mueller’s report public — and he contrived to do so in the most helpful way for the president. In the key part of the report, concerning possible obstruction of justice by Trump (like firing Comey to interfere with the Russia investigation), Mueller said he was bound by Justice Department policy barring indictments of sitting presidents. So, instead of just releasing the report as he had promised, Barr took it upon himself to decide whether Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice. Barr “cleared the decks to work long into the night and over the weekend, studying the report. I wanted to come to a decision on obstruction.” And then, mirabile dictu, Barr concluded that the president had not violated the law, and wrote a letter to that effect. When the Justice Department got around to releasing the actual report several weeks later, it became apparent that the evidence against Trump was more incriminating than Barr let on, but by that point the attorney general had succeeded in shaping the story to the president’s great advantage.

Barr portrays Mueller, a former colleague and friend from their service in the George H W. Bush administration, as a feeble old man pushed around by liberals on his staff. To thwart them, Barr took extraordinary steps to trash Mueller’s work. On the eve of the sentencing of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political adviser, for obstruction of justice, Barr overruled the prosecutors and asked for a lighter sentence: “While he should not be treated any better than others because he was an associate of the president’s, he also should not be treated much worse than others.” In fact, Stone was being sentenced pursuant to guidelines that apply in all cases, but in this one and only instance, Barr decided to intervene.

Even more dramatic was Barr’s intercession on behalf of Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Prodded by Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, who later emerged as a principal conspiracy theorist in the post-2020 election period, Barr not only allowed Flynn to revoke his guilty plea but then dismissed the case altogether. “I concluded that the handling of the Flynn matter by the F.B.I. had been an abuse of power that no responsible A.G. could let stand,” he writes. Suffice it to say that none of the thousands of other cases brought by the Justice Department during Barr’s tenure received this kind of high-level attention and mercy; moreover, it was rare, and perhaps even unprecedented, for the department to dismiss a case in which the defendant pleaded guilty.

The only scalps Barr wanted were of those in the F.B.I. who started the Russia investigation in the first place. He writes, “I started thinking seriously about how best to get to the bottom of the matter that really required investigation: How did the phony Russiagate scandal get going, and why did the F.B.I. leadership handle the matter in such an inexplicable and heavy-handed way?” He appointed a federal prosecutor named John Durham to lead this probe, which has now been going on longer than the Mueller investigation, with little to show for it.

“One Damn Thing After Another” begins with a fond evocation of Barr’s childhood in a conservative family nestled in the liberal enclave surrounding Columbia University in New York City. His mother was Catholic, and his father Jewish (though he later converted to Catholicism), and Barr gives a lovely description of his elementary school education at the local Corpus Christi Church. (George Carlin went there too. Go figure.) Barr went on to Horace Mann and then Columbia, where he developed an interest in China. After college, he worked briefly at the C.I.A. while attending night law school, where he excelled. He moved up the ranks in the Justice Department until the first President Bush made him attorney general, at 41, in 1991. He was a largely nonideological figure, mostly preoccupied, as many were in those days, with getting surging crime rates under control.

The next quarter-century brought Barr great financial rewards as the top lawyer for the company that, in a merger, became Verizon. More to the point, it brought a hardening of his political views. Barr has a lot to say about the modern world, but the gist is that he’s against it. While attorney general under Trump, he dabbled as a culture warrior, and in his memoir he lets the missiles fly.

“Now we see a mounting effort to affirmatively indoctrinate children with the secular progressive belief system — a new official secular ideology.” Critical race theory “is, at bottom, essentially the materialist philosophy of Marxism, substituting racial antagonism for class antagonism.” On crime: “The left’s ‘root causes’ mantra is really an excuse to do nothing.” (Barr’s only complaint about mass incarceration is that it isn’t mass enough.) Barr loathes Democrats: President Obama, a “left-wing agitator, … throttled the economy, degraded the culture and frittered away U.S. strength and credibility in foreign affairs.” (Barr likes Obama better than Hillary Clinton.) Overall, his views reflect the party line at Fox News, which, curiously, he does not mention in several jeremiads about left-wing domination of the news media.

Barr is obviously too smart to miss what was in front of him in the White House. He says Trump is “prone to bluster and exaggeration.” His behavior with regard to Ukraine was “idiotic beyond belief.” Trump’s “rhetorical skills, while potent within a very narrow range, are hopelessly ineffective on questions requiring subtle distinctions.” Indeed, by the end, Barr concludes that “Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”

Barr’s odd theory about Good Trump turning into Bad Trump may have more to do with his feelings about Democrats than with the president he served. “I am under no illusion about who is responsible for dividing the country, embittering our politics and weakening and demoralizing our nation,” he writes. “It is the progressive left and their increasingly totalitarian ideals.” In a way, it’s the highest praise Barr can offer Trump: He had the right enemies.

Dear Commons Community,

Based on February’s jobs report released last Friday, the U.S. job market looks incredibly healthy entering the spring as unemployment continues to drop and non-farm job employment rises.

“Today’s employment report continued to make one thing very clear — the U.S. economy is potentially witnessing the most fertile employment market in a generation,” said Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of fixed income. “Indeed, the labor market recovery has overcome multiple variants of the pandemic, as well as supply chain shocks, which create higher input costs for companies, in turn pressuring profit margins. Still, corporations appear to be barely blinking at all of this and are moving right on ahead with bringing on more workers at ever-increasing cost.”

Rieder’s hot take on the economy was on full display for February.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. economy added back the most jobs since July 2021 in February. Non-farm payrolls rose 678,000 in February, easily beating analyst forecasts for 423,000. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.8% from 3.9% in January.

Jobs for the prior two months were revised up by a total of 92,000.

“It’s a very good economic recovery that the president is leading,” said U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Yahoo Finance Live. “You talk to the financial experts and they will tell you aside from inflation, we have a strong economy now in the United States of America.”

Despite the upbeat jobs report, markets tanked as traders fretted about the Federal Reserve being behind the curve on the inflation fighting front. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 500 points in afternoon trading Friday.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell this week strongly signaled a 25 basis point rate hike at the meeting later this month. But with inflation running rampant in part due to the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine, some pros are questioning whether the Fed needs to be aggressive on rate increases, regardless.

For his part, BlackRock’s Rieder thinks Powell & Co. should proceed carefully on rate hikes so as to not disturb the fertile jobs markets in the U.S.

“We continue to see data that shows not only better employment conditions, and particularly for lower- and middle-income workers, but higher wages and improved benefits for that same cohort, which is something that the Fed should be very careful about not disrupting,” added Rieder.

Good news for American workers!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A Florida high school student has been suspended indefinitely after handing out pride flags during a walkout to protest the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Flagler Palm Coast High School junior Jack Petocz helped organize a statewide walkout on Thursday to protest House Bill 1557, a hugely controversial measure that would prohibit school instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

As reported by The Huffington Post and News19 in Florida.

About 500 students at his Palm Coast school participated in Thursday’s walkout, chanting, “Say gay!” Petocz handed out 200 pride flags he said he purchased with his own money. Students had been given just 15 minutes to protest.

Petocz told the Daytona Beach News-Journal he was called into the principal’s office after the protest, “told I was disrespectful and openly advocating against staff.”

“They suspended me from campus until further notice. I informed the principal I wasn’t going to speak with him and was going to talk to a lawyer,” Petocz added.

He said an hour before the protest, the principal pulled him aside and specifically complained about the flags. “He told me I wouldn’t be allowed to [distribute the flags]. He went further to question the intentions of our protest, asking if pride flags were relevant to opposition to the bill.”

A spokesperson for the Flagler school district insisted in a statement to the Daytona newspaper that Petocz had not been suspended but had been “placed on excused administrative leave” while school officials investigate.

Petocz said he would do it again. “I may have been suspended, but I will not be silenced. I am proud of who I am.

Good for Petocz for standing up for what he believes!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her column this morning entitled, “Zelensky and Trump: Two Performers, One Hero,” compares the two  and concludes that Zelensky has emerged as a major leader in the eyes of the world and who has shown great valor in guiding his people to fight the Russian menace.  Trump on the other hand, “was always a faux tough guy who bragged about grabbing women and loved all things military except serving in it. Cadet Bone Spurs. Courage was an alien concept to this spoiled brat; he has always been a bully who let other people do the fighting for him.  He sicced a mob on the Capitol, while he went back to the comfort of the White House to watch his attempted coup play out on TV and to gloat about the frightened, barricaded lawmakers and his own trapped vice president.”

Furthermore, Zelensky is trying to save Ukrainian democracy while Trump has tried to overturn American democracy. 

Dowd has both men right!

The entire piece is below. 

Tony

 —————————————————————————-

The New York Times

Zelensky and Trump: Two Performers, One Hero

March 5, 2022

By Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — History is full of strange odysseys and intersections.

But it’s bizarre that two men who were both front page news in the Friday Times started on similar paths and, with a consequential encounter along the way, ended up so differently.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky both played leaders on TV shows and then became leaders in real life. They both used social media to gain power. And they both had zany acting gigs.

In 2015, Trump, who had a cameo in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” debated whether to play a president in “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” or actually run for the presidency.

Zelensky starred in romantic comedies and played the president of Ukraine in a sitcom. He shimmied in a fringed, hot-pink number to win the Ukrainian version of “Dancing With the Stars,” did the voice of Paddington Bear when the “Paddington” movies were dubbed in Ukrainian, and entertained a roaring live audience by dropping his pants and providing a lewd performance of “Hava Nagila” — a nod to his Jewish heritage.

But after they ascended to power, the would-be president of “Sharknado 3” and the Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear took on very different roles.

Trump became a blackguard. Zelensky donned a white hat. Trump tried to overturn American democracy. Zelensky tried to save Ukrainian democracy.

Trump was always a faux tough guy who bragged about grabbing women and loved all things military except serving in it. Cadet Bone Spurs. Courage was an alien concept to this spoiled brat; he has always been a bully who let other people do the fighting for him.

He sicced a mob on the Capitol, while he went back to the comfort of the White House to watch his attempted coup play out on TV and to gloat about the frightened, barricaded lawmakers and his own trapped vice president.

Zelensky has stayed rooted in Kyiv to rally the morale of his brutalized country and face down Vladimir Putin and the invading Russian army. He admits he is afraid, but he doesn’t show it as danger closes in. Zelensky knows, as Putin’s “Target No. 1,” he could lose his life.

The 44-year-old Ukrainian president has become a symbol of bravery. His leadership has been defined by nimble action against overwhelming odds, great one-liners like “I need ammunition, not a ride,” and modesty. As he said in his inauguration speech in 2019: “I would very much like for you to not have my portrait in your offices. No portraits! A president is not an icon, nor an idol. A president is not a portrait. Put photographs of your children there, instead. And before making any decision, look them in the eyes.”

Stubbly and exhausted, operating on three hours of sleep a night, dressed in an Army-green T-shirt, he dragged his own chair into position at a news conference he held while in hiding.

Trump, in a nimbus of selfishness and narcissism, inverted revered American ideals. He soiled the image of his country and reshaped it around his grievances and inadequacies.

Zelensky stood up for Ukrainian ideals. He helped imbue his country with a shining, resilient image, reinforced when the world saw remarkable images of battle-ready mothers and grannies making Molotov cocktails.

Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding military aid to Ukraine (“I would like you to do us a favor, though”) until Zelensky dug up dirt on Joe Biden, Trump’s rival, and Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.

As Franklin Foer wrote in The Atlantic, before that call, America had always tried to inject morality into Ukrainian politics. But Trump “polluted Ukraine with his own transactional politics.”

Representative Adam Schiff and other Democratic leaders of that impeachment say people can now see how wrong Trump was to try to withhold aid to Zelensky, then in office only two months.

“It hammers home how despicable an act it was to treat Ukraine as a political plaything,” Schiff told Rolling Stone.

The claim by Trump and his sycophants that his relationship with Putin had kept Russia out of Ukraine is ludicrous. He was Putin’s poodle and Putin would have rolled over him; he was biding his time as Trump weakened NATO.

Trump praised Putin for an act of “genius” even as the rest of the world was watching in horror as the mad Russian president prepared to order the bloody march through Ukraine and suffocated the remnants of a free press in Moscow.

That was a shameful moment, as was a House committee on Wednesday producing evidence it said showed that Trump had conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by bamboozling Americans about the election and trying to flip the result.

There were even some Republicans — mirabile dictu — backing away from the toxic Trump over Ukraine. In a speech to top G.O.P. donors Friday night in New Orleans, Mike Pence included the line, “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.”

By standing up to the Evil Empire, Zelensky could earn comparisons to another performer turned pol, and that should grate on Trump as much as having his vice president turn on him.

Ronald Reagan helped lift the Iron Curtain. Zelensky is trying his best to stop it from slamming down again.

George Will

Dear Commons Community.

The dean of conservative commentators, George Will, slammed Donald Trump as “a suppurating wound on American life” in a column highlighting what appears to be the former president’s gradual loss of influence over his own party.

Trump “looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve,” Will, who quit the GOP in 2016, wrote in his latest essay (see the entire piece below) for The Washington Post.

The former president’s power to influence the GOP’s selection of candidates up and down the ballot is in serious danger following a series of “unimpressive” interventions in primaries, said Will, who noted how several Trump-backed MAGA Republicans are floundering in the polls.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “a hellacious distraction” from Trump and his allies’ self-absorption,” Will concluded. “Fortunately, their ability to be major distractions is waning.

Bless you, George, for telling it like it is!

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

The Washington Post

Opinion: Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve

By George F. Will

March 4, 2022

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve. His residual power, which he must use or lose, is to influence his party’s selection of candidates for state and federal offices. This is, however, perilous because he has the power of influence only if he is perceived to have it. That perception will dissipate if his interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive.

So, Trump must try to emulate the protagonist of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” In Mark Twain’s novel, a 19th-century American is transported back in time to Britain in the year 528. He gets in trouble, is condemned to death, but remembers that a solar eclipse occurred on the date of his scheduled execution. He saves himself by vowing to extinguish the sun but promising to let it shine again if his demands are met.

Trump is faltering at the business of commanding outcomes that are, like Twain’s eclipse, independent of his interventions. Consider the dilemma of David Perdue.

He is a former Republican senator because Trump, harping on the cosmic injustice of his November loss in 2020, confused and demoralized Georgia Republicans enough to cause Perdue’s defeat by 1.2 percentage points in the January 2021 runoff. Nevertheless, Trump talked Perdue into running in this year’s gubernatorial primary against Georgia’s Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp, whom Trump loathes because Kemp spurned Trump’s demand that Georgia’s presidential vote be delegitimized. In a February poll, Kemp led Perdue by 10 points.

Trump failed in his attempt to boost his preferred Senate candidate in North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd, by pressuring a rival out of the race. As of mid-January, Budd was trailing in the polls. Trump reportedly might endorse a second Senate candidate in Alabama, his first endorsement, of Rep. Mo Brooks, having been less than earthshaking. Trump has endorsed Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin in the gubernatorial primary against Gov. Brad Little. A poll published in January: Little 59 percent, McGeachin 18 percent. During Trump’s presidency, a majority of Republicans said they were more supporters of Trump than of the GOP. That has now reversed.

Trump is an open book who has been reading himself to the nation for 40 years. In that time, he has changed just one important word in his torrent of talk: He has replaced “Japan” with “China” in assigning blame for our nation’s supposed anemia. He is an entertainer whose repertoire is stale.

A European war is unhelpful for Trump because it reminds voters that Longfellow was right: Life is real, life is earnest. Trump’s strut through presidential politics was made possible by an American reverie; war in Europe has reminded people that politics is serious.

From Capitol Hill to city halls, Democrats have presided over surges of debt, inflation, crime, pandemic authoritarianism and educational intolerance. Public schools, a point of friction between citizens and government, are hostages of Democratic-aligned teachers unions that have positioned K-12 education in an increasingly adversarial relationship with parents. The most lethal threat to Democrats, however, is the message Americans are hearing from the party’s media-magnified progressive minority: You should be ashamed of your country.

Trump’s message is similar. He says this country is saturated with corruption, from the top, where dimwits represent the evidently dimwitted voters who elected them, down to municipalities that conduct rigged elections. Progressives say the nation’s past is squalid and not really past; Trump says the nation’s present is a disgrace.

Speaking of embarrassments: We are the sum of our choices, and Vladimir Putin has provoked some Trump poodles to make illuminating ones. Their limitless capacity for canine loyalty now encompasses the Kremlin war criminal. (The first count against Nazi defendants at Nuremberg: “Planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression.”) For example, the vaudevillian-as-journalist Tucker Carlson, who never lapses into logic, speaks like an arrested-development adolescent: Putin has never called me a racist, so there.

J.D. Vance, groveling for Trump’s benediction (Vance covets Ohio’s Republican Senate nomination), two weeks ago said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Apparently upon discovering that Ohio has 43,000 Ukrainian Americans, Vance underwent a conviction transplant, saying, “Russia’s assault on Ukraine is unquestionably a tragedy,” and emitting clouds of idolatry for Trump’s supposedly Metternichian diplomacy regarding Putin.

For Trump, the suppurating wound on American life, and for those who share his curdled venom, war is a hellacious distraction from their self-absorption. Fortunately, their ability to be major distractions is waning.

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence urged Republicans to move on from the 2020 election and declared that “there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin”.

Pence, in a speech Friday evening to the party’s top donors in New Orleans, took on those in his party who have failed to forcefully condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom? There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin,” Pence said, according to excerpts from the speech, which was closed to reporters. “There is only room for champions of freedom.”

Pence did not directly reference the former president. But Trump has repeatedly used language that has been criticized as deferential to Putin, including calling the Russian leader “smart” while insisting the attack never would have happened on his watch.

Pence also continued to push back on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election as he lays the groundwork for a possible 2024 presidential run. Trump, who has been teasing his own comeback bid that could potentially put the two in direct competition, has continued to falsely insist that Pence had the power to overturn the 2020 election, which he did not.

“Elections are about the future,” Pence said. “My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values. We cannot win by fighting yesterday’s battles, or by relitigating the past.”

Pence has been increasingly willing to challenge Trump — a dramatic departure from his deferential posture as vice president.

Pence has said the two men will likely never see “eye to eye” on the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Last month, he directly rebutted Trump’s false claims that he, as vice president, could have overturned the results, telling a gathering of lawyers in Florida that Trump was “wrong.”

Still, he joined the oft-stated view of Trump and others in the Republican Party Friday evening in blaming President Joe Biden for Putin’s actions, accusing the current president of having “squandered the deterrence that our administration put in place to keep Putin and Russia from even trying to redraw international boundaries by force.”

“It’s no coincidence that Russia waited until 2022 to invade Ukraine,” Pence said, according to excerpts. “Weakness arouses evil, and the magnitude of evil sweeping across Ukraine speaks volumes about this president.”

While Pence allies believe that he can forge a coalition that brings together movement conservatives, white Evangelical Christians and more establishment-minded Republicans, Trump’s attacks on Pence have made him deeply unpopular with large swaths of Trump’s loyal base, potentially complicating his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Pence on Jan. 6 had to be whisked to safety with his family as a mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol building, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

Pence and other Republicans need to keep hitting at Trump, his lies, and his admiration of Putin.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The University of California, Berkeley will be forced to admit about 3,000 fewer students than it planned for fall 2022 after the California State Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling limiting enrollment.

Yesterday, the Court denied the university’s request to stay a lower court’s ruling, which mandated the school limit enrollment to its 2020-2021 levels, effectively slashing the school’s upcoming freshman year class by almost one-third.

In a statement, the university said it was “extremely disheartened” by the ruling, saying it was “devastating news for the thousands of students who have worked so hard for and have earned a seat in our fall 2022 class.” As reported by The Huffington Post.

The university said last month that if the ruling held, it would mean they would have to send out over 5,000 fewer admissions offers later this month, in order to limit enrollment numbers.

These rulings come after Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, a local community group, sued the school over its expansion plans, arguing that enrolling more UC Berkeley students would result in a negative impact on local housing prices and other environmental issues.

The university warned of “serious financial consequences” that come with lowering enrollment, estimating losses at $57 million in tuition, which would affect how much financial aid and other “critical student services” it can provide students. The school also noted that limiting enrollment to its 2020-2021 levels — at the height of the coronavirus pandemic — means freezing enrollment at an “abnormally low” rate of about 42,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

In a dissent Thursday, Justice Goodwin Liu, joined by Justice Joshua Groban, slammed their colleagues’ decision to allow a limit on enrollment at the university, saying thousands of students would face an “acute loss” of the “opportunity to attend one of our state’s premier universities.”

“This is not even to mention the contributions of leadership, innovation and service that our state and broader society may lose if thousands of students have to defer or forgo attending UC Berkeley,” the justices wrote, adding that the university being set to lose millions in tuition will “undermine California’s interests in expanding access to education.”

In response to the ruling, the school said it is “engaged with state leaders to identify possible legislative solutions” to this limit on enrollment.

Sad situation for Berkeley!

Tony