TWO DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

TWO DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

Last weekend, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and assorted white supremacist groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for what they billed as a "Unite the Right" rally.  

Their ostensible purpose was to protest Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. The real purpose, according to the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, was to "take [the] country back [and] fulfill the promises of Donald Trump."  As explained in the signs and slogans on offer at their initial march through the University of Virginia campus on Friday night and again at the start of their Emancipation Park rally on Saturday morning, those promises --  to the ears of white supremacists -- included vows that "white lives matter," "you will not replace us," "Jews will not replace us," "the Jewish media is going down" and "Jews are Satan's children." To underscore their commitments, they waved Nazi swastika flags and repeatedly shouted  "Blood and Soil," the Nazi slogan demanding Aryan racial supremacy and control during the Third Reich.  

They were also violent.

On Friday night, white nationalists encircled a smaller group of counter-protesters, at which point fights ensued with the racists throwing their lit tiki-torches at the counter-protesters.  On Saturday, James Fields, a 20-year old who worshipped Adolph Hitler and once described Dachau as a place "where the magic happened," accelerated and then reversed his car into groups of counter-protesters, injuring nineteen and killing Heather D. Heyer. Ms. Heyer was a 32-year old paralegal. Because of the violence, both the City and the Governor issued decrees declaring a state of emergency stopping the rally, both of which the Nazis, or at least some of them (including Fields, who murdered Ms. Heyer shortly after the Governor issued his), proceeded to ignore.

On Saturday, all eyes were fixed firmly on the ostensible leader of the free world, Donald Trump, waiting for his comments on the biggest neo-Nazi event in the US since Skokie in the '70s.

Trump, of course, has a history which can only charitably be characterized as "race baiting."  The day he announced his candidacy, he called Mexicans rapists.  During his campaign, he said an American judge could not fairly adjudicate his case because of that Judge's Mexican heritage.  His principal adviser, Steve Bannon, is widely viewed to be a white supremacist.  And in his campaign rallies, Trump openly advised supporters to take out opponents, promising that he, Trump, would pay any legal bills occasioned by the assault.

So, Trump took to the podium on Saturday and proceeded to denounce the violence on . . .

"Many sides."

He didn't name the neo-Nazis, or the KKK, or the host of other white supremacist groups that showed up in Charlottesville armed to the the teeth and spewing racist anti-Semitic rants.  Instead, he "condemn[ed] in the strongest possible terms the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." He called for "a swift restoration of law and order," and said that neither he nor his predecessor was responsible for what "has been going on for a long, long time."

Say what?

In addition to not naming any racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups, the statement was false on multiple levels.  The display of "hatred, bigotry and violence" was one sided, not many sided.  The clergy who organized the counter-protests aren't bigots and preached love, not violence; the same goes for Ms. Heyer, whose only apparent fault in life was an unerring sympathy for those who are marginalized in this world.  

Nor was "law and order" remotely a solution.  Nazis and the KKK don't preach law and order.  They demand white supremacy and will take up arms to insure it.  

And finally, Trump is responsible for what went on in Charlottesville. His racist dog-whistles over the past two years and love affair with the alt-right's Bannon are widely perceived  by white supremacists as permission slips.  In fact, on Saturday, Andrew Anglin, the creator of The Daily Stormer Nazi web site, praised Trump's statement.  Said Anglin: "[Trump]  didn't attack us. [H]e implied that there was hate on both sides. So he implied the [anti-fascists] are haters.  There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all." Another post on the Daily Stormer site said, "Trump comments were good . . . Nothing specific against us."

No kidding.

Over the next forty-eight hours, Trump was met with a firestorm of criticism.  Republican eminence grise Orrin Hatch said, "We should call evil by its name.  My bother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."  Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardener said much the same.  Ted Cruz called Fields's rampage "domestic terrorism," as did South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. The Democrats seemed almost amazed.  Said former Vice President Biden: "There is only one side."

Two days later, Trump issued a new statement.  This time he named the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, saying their acts were "repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans." And following it, the GOP came to his defense. Said conservative Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole: "Because of the nature of the attack, he should have been more specific.  Within 48 hours, he was.  Probably he missed an opportunity, but we are all singing from the same song book now, and that's a good thing."

No.

It isn't.

There aren't a medley of available tunes for a President to sing on Nazism or white supremacy or the KKK.  

There's only one.

It's called condemnation.

And it shouldn't take two days to sing that song.

This isn't a subject that is pregnant with ambiguity or otherwise difficult to get right.  It's not open to debate or one on which reasonable positions exist on both sides.  David Duke and white nationalist Richard Spencer are not spokesmen for any defensible argument or point of view.  They are racists. As a consequence of the very freedoms they would deprive anyone without a white skin, Spencer and Duke (and Fields and all the other tiki-torch carriers on parade last week in Charlottesville) can speak all the want.  

But that is all they can do. 

And when they do that, any President from any party should condemn them.

Immediately.

Trump didn't just miss an opportunity this week and last.

He failed a test. 

                                          *       *        *

Postscript -- As this essay was being written and published, Trump held another press conference in the lobby of his Trump Tower in New York City.  In that conference, he defended his Saturday comments, repeated the disingenuous claim that there had been violence on "both sides," and even uttered the preposterous claim that there were "fine people" in the group that included the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  

There was no singing from the same songbook, just an angry regurgitation of the false moral equivalence offered up on Saturday.

Not surprisingly, Duke and Spencer praised him for his latest equivocation.

So, we now have a President -- with a Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren --  praised by a Klansman and a neo-Nazi as he air brushes their evil and tars and feathers their opponents.

I don't know if all of this is a "high crime and misdemeanor."

But it should be.

PROFILE IN COURAGE

PROFILE IN COURAGE

It was a dramatic moment, a Hollywood moment, a moment about which movies will be made and books will be written.

A senior Republican Senator from a very red state walked bleary-eyed to the well of the Senate in the early hours of the morning.  The Senator voted "No" on the motion.  The "No" killed the GOP's Health Care Freedom Act, an eight page piece of legislation unveiled only hours before. The Act was a walking misnomer.  For the 15 million who would have lost their medical insurance as a consequence, it provided neither health nor freedom.  

The "No" saved Obamacare from the inevitable death it would have suffered at the hands of this misnomer.  Everyone -- even the GOP -- wants insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions while keeping  premiums affordable. That can't be done if the pool of insured is either too small or too sick.  Costs soar in either case; the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted premium hikes of 20% had the misnomer become law. Hence, Obamacare's individual mandate, the requirement that everyone  have health insurance, and pay premiums,  so that the sick can be treated at prices we can all afford.

The "No" restored some common sense to the health care debate. Once it happened,  the Majority Leader, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell, was forced to concede that his party must now move on to other matters.  This probably means that health care returns to the Congressional committees within whose jurisdiction it rests; no more midnight votes on unknown bills where there have been no hearings, perhaps the end of legislating ignorance. 

The Senate, like the country, is exhausted.  It is tired of Trump and tweets and twilight sessions designed to fulfill  promises Republicans made but never thought they'd have to honor.  Repealing Obamacare was one of those promises.  Everyone sitting in the Senate last night thought Trump would lose last November . . .

And that Hillary would save them from the consequences of their vote.

Alas, Hillary was at home in Chappaqua and The Donald was at home in the White House.  

His Hairness, as he told us repeatedly throughout the week, had "pen in hand," ready to sign anything the Republican Congress sent him. The Health Care Freedom Act would do. He wanted a bill, any bill. He vigorously lobbied the Senator who would ultimately stop the GOP in its tracks and prevent Trump from claiming his obsessively sought "win". Though his campaign promise to insure that all have health insurance had become, as another failing President once famously said, "inoperative" . . . 

The "No" saved us from that as well.

When it was over, Republicans cried but Democrats did not gloat. They knew how close they had come to a GOP "Yes" that spelled disaster for 15 million and a lot of premium pain for the rest of us. 

Earlier in the week, a motion to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the Senate's amended version of the House's repeal and replace had failed by a fourteen vote margin, and on Wednesday a motion to just repeal Obamacare without any replacement had failed by ten votes. In both cases,  more than a half dozen GOP Senators had voted against. 

By Thursday night, however, the GOP had come up with a pared down version that became known as "skinny repeal."  It eliminated the individual mandate, funding for Planned Parenthood, and some taxes (over a period of years).  But it didn't  touch Medicaid, and because of that, it seemed to thread the needle, allowing GOP Senators from states that had accepted the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare to satisfy their Governors while repealing the provisions of the Affordable Care Act Republicans hated most.  Nevertheless, the  CBO predicted that 15 million would lose insurance if skinny repeal became law.

At 2:00 a.m. today, those 15 million breathed a sigh of relief.  Skinny repeal was defeated . . .

By one vote.

In a rare profile in courage at a time when there's lots of the former but almost none of the latter,  the vote came from a senior Republican Senator from an implacably red state.

A state that Donald Trump easily carried last November.

I'm speaking, of course, of . . .

Alaska's Lisa Murkowski.

SUMMER OF '17

SUMMER OF '17

In the Summer of 1962, I was six years old.  

My father and mother took my sister and me to Cape Cod on vacation. We rented a small bungalow on the bay side, in Yarmouth Port.  In the late morning and early afternoon, we swam in the bay. At night we barbecued.  In the morning, my father went clamming.  

That was pretty much our daily schedule during this week long idyll.

Except on Sunday, when we had to go to Mass.  

And did.

But not just any Mass.  

This was 1962 and the most famous Catholic in America was hanging out only a few miles away.  So we packed into the Plymouth and drove to Mass in Hyannis Port.

It was hot and crowded.  

And in Latin.  

So I didn't understand a thing.  

Except at the end . . .  

When we stood outside the church and watched the President of the United States and his wife leave the church and hop into a car for their ride home.  

My father put me on his shoulders and there JFK was, distinctly red-headed, smiling at the crowd, elegant and, I knew,  important.

He wasn't important to me because of what he had said ("Ask not..."), or because of what he had done (become the youngest elected President in our history), or even because of the position he held. He wasn't important to me because he was taking us to the moon, or unleashing a new found enthusiasm among the young, or enlisting America's brightest to govern with vigor (or vig-ah, as he said it).

I was six and knew none of this.

He was important, someone to look up to,  because my parents told me he was, and then -- to prove it -- lifted me above a small sea of humanity for my bird's-eye view.

How many parents are doing that today?

President Trump thinks his wife is, as he has put it, "Jackie O. on steroids."  Perhaps so.  She is elegant and reserved and independent, with more than a hint of the Europe that produced her.  

But for all that Melania Trump might  resemble Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, we can say with complete certainty that Donald Trump is no John F. Kennedy. 

Kennedy was measured.  Trump is impulsive.

Kennedy was active and engaged.  Trump is lazy and bored.  

Kennedy respected his advisers.  Trump makes his nervous.  

Kennedy was eloquent.  Trump is bombastic. 

Kennedy disarmed his critics.  Trump insults his. 

Kennedy tried to tear down walls that separated peoples.  Trump wants to build them.  

Kennedy called out the best in us.  Trump nourishes our resentments.

And, finally . . .

Kennedy confronted Russian dictators. Trump embraces them.

Both of them, as human beings, were (in JFK's case) and are (in Trump's) flawed.  In fact, they were both very flawed, neither paragons of virtue in their personal lives nor unwilling to throw sharp elbows in their professional ones.  

They also share a common denominator of having mastered before all others the new media of their time -- television in the case of JFK and social media in the case of Trump. 

And both of them are  victims of hagiography, by third parties post-November 1963 in Kennedy's case and by his own hand in Trump's. They thus exist in worlds where truth runs up against nostalgia for a world that wasn't (JFK)  or one that cannot be (Trump).  Put differently, the nation in the early '60s was not as great as Arthur Schlesinger's JFK would have us believe it was, and today it will not ever resemble Trump's grandiose fictions, no matter how often he mouths the words "win" or "great".

The difference, however, is that Kennedy was aware of his flaws, tried to confront and tame them, treated sycophants with disdain and popularity with suspicion, and used new media to embrace and include.  Trump either boasts about his flaws or lies about them, retreats to his twitter account where he insults and divides, demands praise, and deifies polls even as he distorts them.

In the Summer of '62, I was held above a crowd to witness a President held high.

If that happened today . . .

There'd be nothing to see.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

Happy Birthday America.

Now blow out the candles and make a wish.

Not so easy this year, is it?

In the past, your greatest dreams were your fondest wishes.  

In 1776, you wished for independence and wrote a manifesto on liberty rooted in the intellectual high ground of enlightened reason and natural rights.

In 1865, you wished for an end to fratricide, understanding that the end could come only by repudiating the hypocrisy that enslaved some in the service of a proclaimed equality for all.

In 1885,  you wished that the world would send you its "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," planted this wanted sign on liberty's statue in New York's harbor, and then welcomed untold millions in the greatest immigration wave the world has ever seen.

In 1918 and 1945,  you wished for world peace and sent millions of you own abroad in search of that goal.  In between, you wished for shared prosperity and deputized a government to make possible what greed had made unattainable.

In 1965, you wished for a color-blind society, and enlisted law in the service of that aim. Forty-three years later, in 2008, you came closer than ever to making that wish a reality.

What will you wish for this year?

You are in serious trouble.  You are being led, such as it is, by an insecure demagogue who demands loyalty instead of competence,  an unschooled and immature narcissist with neither the ability to do his job nor the willingness to learn.  He is a man-child permanently stuck at adolescence, all ego and little id, shallow, mean spirited and often just cruel.  Lacking impulse control, he is willing at every turn to insult and demean any who oppose or criticize.  His dishonesty is pathological.

In a family, this is  fatal, which is why he has had three of them. 

In a business, this can be fatal as well, which is why so many of his have failed.

In a country, however, these traits invite catastrophe.

Over the course of the last six months, he has spurned allies and empowered at least one enemy. Perhaps (we do not yet know and he denies it) complicit in -- and in any case incompetently silent on -- Russian interference in last year's election, he degrades a free  press, labeling fake what is true.  As he journeys to Hamburg this week to confront our enemy, but his apparent friend, the free world shudders at the prospect of what such an entente could entail.  

There are no immediate solutions.  

Time may provide an opportunity for correction.   But if provided, reason would still have to prevail.

It did not last year.

So Happy Birthday America.

Blow out the candles.

And wish wisely.

THE BOY SCOUT AND THE BULLY

THE BOY SCOUT AND THE BULLY

Mr. Smith came to Washington DC this week.  

In the person of James Comey.

The original Mr. Smith was played by Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 Frank Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 

In 1989, the Library of Congress added the movie to the National Film Registry.  The Registry preserves films deemed to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."  By the time Capra's Academy Award winning classic made the list, it had been recognized as the famous director's signature statement on the power of common decency over thuggish crooks as Stewart, in the person of a newly appointed and utterly underestimated Sen. Jefferson Smith, filibusters the Senate with his Boy Scout honesty in the face of crooked politicians who plant false stories to bring him down and preserve their own corrupt lucre.  

The movie has been called "one of the quintessential whistleblower films in American history. "  And in 2007, at the first "Whistleblower Week in Washington", Dr. Jeffrey Wigand celebrated  it as a seminal event in US history.  

Dr. Wigand should know.  

Because in 1996 he blew the lid on Brown & Williamson's efforts to jack up the addictive nicotine content in cigarettes.

And was subject to death threats for doing so.

On Thursday, James Comey blew the whistle on Donald Trump.

In measured tones, and after parking all 6' 8" of his Stewartesque frame squarely in front of the US Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey recounted his entire relationship with Donald Trump.  

He met Trump for the first time on January 6 at Trump Tower.Though that meeting involved a group intelligence briefing of the then President-elect "concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election," Comey had been chosen by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)  to give Trump a separate private briefing afterward on what Comey euphemistically referred to as "some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled" by the "intelligence community," or what is the now infamous MI6 dossier. Comey did so, and immediately after leaving the meeting and hopping into an FBI car, he began typing up a memo of his conversation with Trump.

This was the occasion for Comey's first testimonial blockbuster.

Asked why he decided to memorialize his conversation with Trump, Comey stated that the "circumstances, the subject matter and the person I was interacting with" led him to do so. He then explained what he meant: "I was alone with . . . the president-elect . . . I was talking about matters that touch on the FBI's core responsibility and that relate to the  . . . president-elect personally . . . And then . . .  I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document. That combination of things, I'd never experienced before, but it led me to believe I've got to write it down, and I've got to write it down in a very detailed way."

So he did.

Write it down, that is. 

In detail . . .

When it occurred.

And then continued that practice in all his subsequent meetings and conversations with the President.

We lawyers have a term for this.  It's called "present recollection recorded" and it's considered highly credible.

The second blockbuster occurred when Comey described his January 27 dinner with the President. 

That dinner was arranged by Trump, not Comey, and though the President told Comey he had originally planned to make it with Comey's family, it turned out to be, as Comey put it, "just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room."  In that one-on-one, Trump "began by asking" Comey if he wanted to stay on as Director of the FBI.  Comey found this "strange" because the topic had already come up three times before between them and Comey had made it clear that he intended to stay on and serve out the remaining six years of his term.  Comey also thought the President was "looking to get something in exchange for granting [his] request to stay in the job."  "And then, because the set up made [him] uneasy," Comey told Trump that he, Comey, "was not 'reliable' in the way politicians use that word."  

"A few moments later," according to Comey, " the President said 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.'"

Comey then froze.

He didn't "move, speak, or change [his] facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed."

Agreeing with Virginia Sen. Warner that he'd never "had [that] kind of request before, from anyone else . . . in government," Comey explained in the Senate hearing that Congress had "created a ten-year term" for FBI directors precisely to stop any director from "feeling" the need to be "loyal[] . . . to any particular person ."  As he put it, "The . . . statue of Justice has a blindfold on because you're not supposed to be peeking out to see whether your patron is pleased or not with what you're doing."

Even if you patron is Donald Trump.  

In fact, especially if that is the case . . .

Which became manifestly evident a little more than two weeks later.

On February 14, Trump met in the Oval Office with a half dozen Administration officials "for a scheduled counter-terrorism briefing." The briefers included Comey, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the CIA's Deputy Director and the Director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, with assorted "others" sitting behind them.  When the meeting ended, Trump told the group that he "wanted to speak to" Comey "alone."  Two other people in the room -- the Attorney General and Trump' son-in-law Jared Kushner -- had to be told to leave a second time, Comey "sens[ing] . . . the attorney general knew he shouldn't be leaving, which is why he was lingering"  and "think[ing] [Kusher] picked up on the same thing."  

Comey's impression was "something big is about to happen."

He was right.  

The President of the United States was about to obstruct justice.

Once the Oval Office had been cleared , and "the door by the grandfather clock closed," he and the President "were alone." 

Trump then said he "want[ed] to talk about Mike Flynn."  

Trump told Comey that Flynn "hadn't done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians," and then riffed "about the problem with leaks of classified information." As Chief of Staff Reince Priebus "leaned in through the door by the grandfather clock," with a "group of people waiting behind him," Trump "waved" at Priebus to "close the door."  

Trump then returned to the topic of Flynn.  

"He is a good guy and has been through a lot," said the President.  

And then he lowered the boom.  

The President of the United States looked the then-Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation "in the eye" and said: 

"I hope  you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

The United States criminal code makes it a crime to "corruptly" obstruct or impede an on-going investigation. What "corruptly" means in this context is that a defendant intended to interfere with the investigation.  If that was his intent, the element of acting corruptly is satisfied.  If that was not his intent, the crime is not proven.

Applied here, it is pretty difficult to imagine Trump intending anything else.  Trump is not subtle.  He kicked everyone out of the Oval Office, including two who resisted going, later shooed away yet another on-looker, and then specifically told Comey behind closed doors that he "hope[d]" the Director of the FBI could "see his way clear" to shutting down an open investigation.  Less than three months later, after Comey had not done what Trump "hope[d]" he'd do, Trump (i) fired Comey and then (ii) admitted the motive for doing so was the larger investigation into Russian interference out of which the Flynn investigation had itself been born.  If Trump's motives were pure or his intent benign, there would have been no reason to talk to Comey privately, and certainly no reason to make continuing efforts to insure that no one else heard what he, Trump, was saying.

  

Sessions, Kushner and Priebus were more than worried about what was going on behind closed doors, and they were right to be worried.  

Because . . .

Trump was committing a crime.

And knew it.

At the Senate hearing, Idaho's Sen. Risch played with the idea that Trump's "hope" did not amount to a directive but was merely a wish, and a number of Republicans have fallen back on the notion that Trump is new to Washington and just doesn't know what you can or cannot do.  The difficulty with these defenses is that they ignore Trump's own conduct and defy common sense.  

Everyone knows that Trump thinks the Russian investigation is, as he has put it, a "witch hunt," and that he also thinks Mike Flynn "did nothing wrong."  He's already told the world all of this on more than one occasion and has made it more than clear that he "hopes" all the investigations will go away. So, there was no reason for him to empty the Oval Office of witnesses if all he had decided to do was tell Comey the same thing.  

To that same point, there also was no reason for Trump to call Comey on March 30, in yet another one on one,  to find out if there was anything Comey could do to "lift the cloud" that Trump thought the Russian investigation was casting over his Administration.  Though that call ultimately led to Trump merely asking Comey to disclose that he, Trump, was not under investigation, Trump could have asked Sessions to tell Comey to disclose that "fact" and did not need to get in Comey's grill to do so.  In fact, as Comey pointed out to Trump in yet another call on April 11, going through Sessions would have been the right way to do it.

Why didn't Trump do it the right way?  Why was he always engaging Comey one on one?

The answer is simple.

Trump was trying to leverage Comey into doing what he, Trump, wanted done.  What he wanted was crystal clear -- loyalty on the one hand and an end to the Flynn (and probably the overall Russian) investigation on the other.  

And he was basically holding Comey's job over Comey's head as part of that shake down.

On the day of Comey's testimony, Trump's private attorney denied that Trump had asked Comey to end any investigation, and the day after the testimony Trump did so himself.  Trump also denied that he ever asked Comey for his "loyalty" or "allegiance."  In the past, Trump has hinted at the possibility that his conversations with Comey were taped but has refused to actually confirm this as a fact. For his part, Comey hopes there are tapes and made it clear to the Senate that if they exist, he has no problem with their immediate release.

The likelihood, of course, is that there are no tapes.  Trump is an inveterate liar and bully, and Comey is a Boy Scout.  Tapes would end the controversy over who said what to whom in a heart beat . . .

And in Comey's favor.

So the only way Trump can survive this is by claiming Comey's testimony is false, attacking the ex-FBI Director relentlessly, and then relying on the GOP cowards in Congress to thwart any effort at impeachment.  

Reliance on the GOP may well work.  They are cowards.  In the past, they have forgiven or looked past all of Trump's sins.  And they are now in the process of twisting themselves into pretzels as they deconstruct the word "hope" in an effort to separate the message from the messenger.

But attacking Comey will not work.

The Boy Scout beat the bully in Mr. Smith because one of the bad guys grew a conscience once the exhausted Senator fainted from his filibuster.  

The Boy Scout will beat the bully here because, in the "he said, he said" now unfolding . . . 

America has already decided who to believe.

And it ain't Trump.

AMERICA GOES SMALL

AMERICA GOES SMALL

On December 12, 2015, the Paris Accord was adopted at the 21st session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At the time, the agreement was considered a world-wide political and diplomatic breakthrough. Phoenix-like, it rose from the ashes of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, whose mandated reductions in carbon emissions resulted in the rejection of  that Protocol by the second Bush Administration in 2001, and then resurrected the possibility of world-wide consensus on both the issue of climate change and a modest framework to (possibly) reduce it.

The operative words here are "modest" and "possibly."  

The Accord was not binding in any legal sense.  It did not require any nation to meet any specific reduction in carbon emissions.  And  the Accord's goal of  limiting global warming to less than 1.5C compared to pre-industrial era levels was just that -- a goal.  

But, as commentators pointed out at the time, that the Accord was ultimately aspirational did not make it meaningless.  

The hope was that nations, in agreeing to limit their specific individual emissions so as to meet their respective portions of the overall needed reduction, would create a universe in which the cost of non-compliance, measured both economically and morally, would itself engender adherence.  

For a number of reasons,  moreover, the hope was entirely rational.   

First, the scientific consensus on global warming as an established fact was itself irrefutable.   Climate deniers had been reduced to the category of cranks and charlatans, the 21st century's version of a flat earth society that continued to deny the truths of Copernicus. 

Second, the costs of global warming were being calculated and published.  The now famous Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change reported in 2006 that unabated global warming would cause 5-20% annual  reductions in global gross domestic product for the rest of the century, and a 2015 study from Tufts University projected a loss to America alone in the range of 1-3%, along with a global loss of 10%. 

Third, the benefits themselves were large, both in terms of the improved health that would come from less pollution and in terms of the economic growth from green technologies and clean energy.

Finally, the Accord mandated transparency.  Nations could choose their individual (and different) paths to carbon reduction, allowing, for example,  China to pursue clean coal while Norway embraced hydroelectric and the United States developed plains states wind farms.  But they all had to announce their results, and those that failed would presumably suffer the shame of a global citizenry intent on insuring that our world not be destroyed in a sea of melting ice.

Yesterday, Donald Trump ended America's participation in the Paris Accord.  

We now join Syria and Nicaragua as the only two countries that are not a part of the deal.  

The reaction from around the world was swift and universally negative.  The European Union issued a statement deriding Trump's decision as "a sad day for the global community."  The UN Secretary-General called it "a major disappointment."  Leaders from Japan, China, Russia and Europe reiterated their own nation's commitment to the agreement, with France's President Macron, speaking in English, noting -- and not too subtly -- that the Accord was designed to "make the planet great again."

Trump, however, is not interested in the planet.

His speech announcing the departure was his usual bromide of exaggerated claims and rhetorical nonsense.  He trotted out statistics from National Economic Research Associates (NERA) that more than 2 million American jobs would be lost on account of the Accord, with compliance being especially damaging in heavy manufacturing sectors (including iron, steel and coal).   He claimed the Accord had no teeth and would effectively result in American compliance while India and China failed to live up to their commitments.  

The NERA study, however, had already been debunked.  It overstates job loss and doesn't remotely account for expected gains in the clean energy sector.   For that reason, it had been roundly dismissed by the business community, large sectors of which are committed to the Accord.  In fact, over thirty companies -- including notables like GE, Dow Chemical, Citigroup and B of A --  re-stated their commitments yesterday.  As one commentator noted, "This is not a tree hugger group."

The cheating claim is particularly silly.  On the one hand, it was the United States, in the presence of the Obama Administration reacting to pressure from Republicans, which refused to allow the Accord to mandate compliance or impose penalties if nations did not meet their obligations.  The Chinese actually wanted a legally binding deal and didn't get one.  For Trump to now claim that others will cheat while we blindly adhere ignores this history.  On  the other, the whole point of the Accord was to embrace a new form of diplomacy where decentralized compliance and implementation was enforced with transparency and moral suasion.  

It wasn't perfect.

But it wasn't a "nothin' burger" either.  

Nor was there an alternative.  

Trump thinks he can negotiate a new deal but the evidence for that is thin to non-existent.  In his comments yesterday, France's Macron made clear that "there is no Plan B."  And the other signatories have decided to go on without us, willing to lead as we fall behind, but hoping (with some basis in reality) that states, localities and businesses here in the US take up the baton that Trump has just thrown away.

At the end of his speech, Trump asked, "At what point does America get demeaned. At what point do they start laughing at us. We want fair treatment . . . for our taxpayers."  He then finished with a flourish, saying "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."

I don't know when the rest of the world started laughing.  With Trump, there has been no shortage of opportunities.  But Hillary supported the Paris Accord and Pittsburgh voted overwhelmingly for her last November.  

So when he ended there . . .

That's when I started.

TRUMP AGONISTES

TRUMP AGONISTES

Trump has escaped.

To the Middle East and Europe.

Trying to flee from himself.

We learned a week ago that, on the day after he fired James Comey as Director of the FBI, the President met with Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and its ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.  In that meeting, according to reports in both the Washington Post and New York Times,  Trump  -- in an unplanned comment that was not scripted beforehand -- disclosed highly classified information obtained from Israel regarding ISIS plots to blow up airliners with bombs implanted in laptop computers.

Lavrov, Kislyak and Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly -- and predictably -- denied they had obtained anything confidential. But Trump -- as is his wont -- essentially confirmed that they had. The next day he noted that he had the "absolute right" to disclose classified material, effectively admitting that he had, and today he asserted that he had never mentioned to the Russians that  Israel was the source of his information, thus confirming that Israel in fact was the source.

For its part, Israel never gave Trump permission to disclose the secret, an act that breaches the terms under which the secret was shared with the United States in the first place.  Nor was the disclosure planned out beforehand or discussed with the CIA or National Security Agency (NSA).  Instead, it came in the course of one of Trump's signature off the cuff ad libs as he bragged to Lavrov and Kislyak about what "great intel" he, Trump, had.

For the next twenty-four hours, the "shows," as Trump calls them, were all abuzz about this "thousand palms to a thousand foreheads" moment of idiocy.  The Israelis were angry.  No doubt some spies in Syria and/or Iraq, namely, the ones who had told Israel about the plot, were very nervous, having either been outed or subject to the strong risk of such by a President whose narcissism may now be matched only by his negligence.

Trump, however, just hunkered down . . .

And sent out his minions to claim that the real villains were the intelligence "sources" who had leaked his loose lips to the press in the first place.

The President then waited for this latest storm to pass  . . .

Which it did late on Tuesday afternoon . . .

When we found out that James Comey had kept notes of his post-Inaugural meetings with the President.

In those notes, Comey states that Trump in effect  asked him, in a February meeting at the White House,  to end the FBI's investigation into General Michael Flynn's contacts with the Russians during and after the Presidential campaign. Trump's exact words to Comey were "I hope you can let this go." And though that was bad enough,  the even more damning fact was that Trump asked Attorney General Sessions and Vice President Pence to leave the room before he spoke to Comey.

That is what prosecutors call "consciousness of guilt."

For his part, Trump immediately denied asking Comey to stop any investigation.

He did not, however, deny asking Sessions and Pence to leave the room beforehand.

So inquiring minds are now wondering what it was the Donald was so eager to tell Comey on the QT that the Veep and AG had to be escorted out before it could be said.

Maybe one of those minds was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein has recently become famous in his own right, having authored a memo outlining Director Comey's putative malfeasance in publicly discussing last year's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails during the summer and just before the November election. Trump initially claimed that this memo, and Sessions' agreement with it, was the reason he, Trump, fired Comey.  Trump, however, being Trump, blew that excuse up a day after it had been floated, admitting in an interview with NBC that (i) he intended to fire Comey regardless of the memo and (ii) he was doing so because of the Russian investigation, not because Comey had violated DOJ policy in the Hillary email investigation.

In any case, on Wednesday, Rosenstein set off the week's third bomb, appointing Ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller III as special counsel to take over the Russian investigation. 

The scope of Mueller's writ is broad.  The order appointing him allows him to investigate (i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and (iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a). Section 600.4(a) provides that "The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall also include the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the Special Counsel's investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; and to conduct appeals arising out of the matter being investigated and/or prosecuted."

Trump was given no real heads-up on the appointment, told of it only an hour before it was released.   He was also informed of the order, not asked whether it was a good idea.  

Nevertheless, Trump's first reaction was surprisingly muted. Said the President on Wednesday night:

"As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know - there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity.  I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.  In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."

Then he went to bed.

And woke up the next morning

And reverted to type.

At 7:52 am, he tweeted "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!" By mid-morning, he was supporting this claim with the false tweet that special counsels should have been appointed to investigate "all of the illegal acts that took place in the . . . Obama Administration", oblivious to the fact that there were none. At lunch, oblivious to the fact that his own political appointee, Rosenstein, had appointed Mueller, he called the appointment an "excuse for the Democrats having lost an election that they should have easily won because of the Electoral College being slanted so much in their way. That's all this is." And later in the day, at a joint press conference with Colombia's President Santos, he was back to saying "The entire thing is a witch hunt."

He also claimed that the appointment "hurts our country terribly, because it shows we're a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country."  He's right about the division.  In fact, he is the largest cause of it, having catapulted himself into the White House on a tweetstorm of personal invective, ad hominem insult, and applauded thuggishness.

There's no division, however, on this issue . . .

Where 78% of those polled favor a special prosecutor.

On Friday, Trump left for the Middle East.  As his plane headed east, the reminder of the week that was came from the White House's own documentary record of the meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak. "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job," said Trump to the Russians. “I faced great pressure because of Russia," he continued, "That’s taken off."

And so, in one fell swoop, the real motive for the firing -- the Russian investigation -- was again made self-evident.  As was the perverse character of the man for whom the term "low blow" knows no limit.

Trump spent the weekend basking in the adulation of Saudi princes. And for him, that was no doubt a welcome respite.

Because, of the many things we know about Donald John Trump, one is that . . .

Adulation is his tonic.

Another is that . . .

Honesty -- certainly -- is not.