Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

If you take time to read nothing else today, read Jane Meyer's deep dive into the incestuous, deep and continuing relationship between Russian asset Donald "Rump" Trump and Fox "News."  Here's one example concerning the Stormy Daniels episode, which broke just before the election, and Fox's catch and kill:

After the Journal story broke, Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter for CNN, published a piece revealing that Fox had killed a Stormy Daniels story. [Fox executive Ken] LaCorte, who by then had left Fox but was still being paid by the company, told Mediaite that he’d made the call without talking to superiors. The story simply hadn’t “passed muster,” he claimed, adding, “I didn’t do it to protect Donald Trump.” Nik Richie, a blogger who had broken the first story about Daniels, tweeted, “This is complete bullshit. Ken you are such a LIAR. This story got killed by @FoxNews at the highest level. I know, because I was one of your sources.”

Richie told me, “Fox News was culpable. I voted for Trump, and I like Fox, but they did their own ‘catch and kill’ on the story to protect him.” He said that he’d worked closely with [Fox reporter Diana] Falzone on the article, and that “she did her homework—she had it.” He says he warned her that Fox would never run it, but “when they killed it she was devastated.” Richie believes that the story “would have swayed the election.”

That's just a tiny morsel;  Meyers has the receipts on how this loathsome excuse for a "news" network became a mouthpiece for Rump and the ugly pathologies of the Republican Party.

The Booman discusses the Stupid Party (but has cautions for "too smart" Democrats):

The Republicans are losing the suburbs because they’ve become the stupid party.

If you think about this for two seconds, it makes sense. The Democrats appealed to working folks because they supported labor unions and stood up for worker’s rights. They defended people against predatory employers and exploitative industries that prey on people facing economic hardship. The Republicans don’t defend working folks at all, so the appeal has to be based on feeling. It’s values-based, but the values are populist primarily in an anti-intellectual, anti-elite sense. It’s no longer about class resentment related to poor pay, poor housing and poor working conditions. It’s about cultural resentment against people who think they’re better because they’re smarter, better-educated, more cosmopolitan, more “enlightened.”

Republicans can’t remain with one foot rooted in Wall Street and the other foot rooted in the coal and oil fields and still be a worker’s party unless they work overtime to fuel and exploit this resentment. The difficulty is that this makes suburbanites want to Clorox their cerebral cortex whenever they see an Oklahoma senator take a snowball onto the Senate floor to explain that climate change is a myth.

Add another count/ article:

President Trump sent out a predawn tweet Saturday boasting about Trump International Golf Links, constructed near Aberdeen, Scotland, among the high, wind-raked dunes along the North Sea.

“Very proud of perhaps the greatest golf course anywhere in the world. Also, furthers U.K. relationship!” Trump tweeted.

The comment sparked immediate consternation from critics of the president, who suggested he was using his powerful office to advance his financial interests. The U.S. Constitution has two clauses designed to prevent a national leader from using power in such a manner.

“There it is. The president is using an official statement as an ad for his business and making sure everyone knows he ties his business to US relationships with foreign countries,” tweeted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is suing the president over these issues.

Paul Krugman looks at the consequences of Rump's trade wars.  It's not a pretty picture.

Say this for Donald Trump: He’s provided us with many iconic quotations, which will surely be repeated in histories and textbooks for decades if not generations to come.

Unfortunately, they’ll be repeated because they are extremely clear examples of bad ideas.

In economics, the line you hear most is Trump’s declaration that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Coming in second is his assertion that “I am a Tariff Man,” coupled with the claim that foreigners pay the tariffs he has been imposing.

Now, that last claim is something you can test. Over the course of 2018 Trump imposed tariffs on about 12 percent of total U.S. imports, and many of those tariffs have been in effect long enough that we can get a first read on their consequences.

Finally, Infidel 753 is back with another heapin' helpin' of interesting links from around the internet. Always enjoyable to take some time and browse.