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President Trump has never been all that willing to acknowledge his own faults. He occasionally admits he might have some, mind you, but he prefersto treat them like Voldemort.

Such was the case in an interview with Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning. Check out this exchange, when Trump and Brian Kilmeade were talking about Trump pulling out of the White House correspondents' dinner, where Trump was roasted a few years ago:

KILMEADE: You said before, 'I can take hits when it's justified.'

TRUMP: Correct.

KILMEADE: Right.

TRUMP: One hundred percent.

KILMEADE: Can you give me an example of a time when someone was critical of you and you thought to yourself, I deserved that hit, I deserved that column, I deserved

TRUMP: No, probably I could never do that.

And there it is.

This isn't entirely new territory, mind you. There was that time during the campaign when Trump acknowledged having said the wrong thing a rare expression of contrition, it seemed. But then he spent days declining to point to anything specific, leaving all of us to guess as to what precisely he meantand even whether he really believed in his own faults.

He had previously said that he wasn't opposed to apologizing but was still in search of something to apologize for. I fully think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong, Trump told Jimmy Fallon in 2015, perhaps jokingly. I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if Im ever wrong. (That moment finally came and Trump did apologize for the Access Hollywood tape in October.)

Trump has also said he didn't think he has ever asked God for forgiveness, despite it being a core tenet of Christianity. I am not sure I have, he said in July. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so.

But within the same interview with Fox on Tuesday, Trump did flash a bit of his ability for self-reflection at a somewhat granular level. He admitted that his messaging over the first month-plus of his presidency has been somewhat lacking and contrasted it with the results, which he assures us are fantastic.

In terms of achievement, I think I'd give myself an A, because I think I've done great things, he said. But I don't think I have I and my people, I don't think we've explained it well enough to the American public. I think I get an A in terms of what I've actually done, but in terms of messaging, I'd give myself a C or a C-plus.

And that's about it for Trump's ability to self-reflect. What's remarkable is that it's not really all that self-critical. This is actually something President Barack Obama said regularly about himself excusing his poor reviews for bad messaging but assuring the product was good. If the reviews are bad, after all, it has to be something and blaming the messaging absolves the quality of the actual output.

Obama said this repeatedly over his years as president, telling Bill Simmons in 2015 that in his first years, a certain arrogance crept in, in the sense of thinking as long as we get the policy ready, we didnt have to sell it.

Messaging is also something Trump isn't totally in charge of, so it has the bonus effect of placing the blame on other people's shoulders along with himself which Trump, it should be emphasized, did.

So while the C or a C-plus comment might get some play, just remember that this is still the same Trump who doesn't really admit his own flaws.Not that he doesn't have them, of course. (Wink.)

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump just admitted he's incapable of acknowledging legitimate criticism - Washington Post

President Trump sat down with "Fox and Friends" on Tuesday morning to preview his address tonight to a joint session of Congress. Using Genius, I annotated it. You can too! Sign up for Genius and annotate alongside me!To see an annotation, click or tap the highlighted part of the transcript.

DOOCY: Mr. President, thank you very much for the invitation.

TRUMP: Thank you.

DOOCY: And by the way, thank you very much for the shout-out you gave at your press conference about 10 days ago.

TRUMP: That's true, I did. And you treated me -- you have treated me very fairly and I appreciate it. I like your (INAUDIBLE)...

DOOCY: Did you take much heat for that from the other networks?

TRUMP: No, not really. I think they know it's true. You know, they know what's fair and not. But you have treated me very fairly. And I've been a friend of your show for a long time.

Remember those call-ins, right (INAUDIBLE)?

DOOCY: For years.

TRUMP: Maybe without those call-ins, somebody else is sitting here.

AINSLEY EARHARDT, HOST: Let's talk about your speech. You're addressing Congress tonight. You have talked about spending $54 billion in additional money for our military.

Senator John McCain has said that is not enough.

What's your reaction?

TRUMP: Well, we're going to spend a lot more money on military. We really have to. We have no choice. And a lot of people think it's a tremendous amount of money. It could be, actually, $30 million, $30 billion more than that. We're going to upgrade our military very substantially.

Remember this, I also am going to get involved in negotiating. we have many planes and boats and ships and everything that we are spending too much money individually on.

We're going to get involved in negotiating. We're going to be able to get, I think, a lot more product for a buck and I'm going to be very, very serious about it.

We saved $700 million plus on an F-35 after I got involved. And I have to tell you, Lockheed was terrific.

But we saved a lot of money on airplanes and that number is going to increase very substantially as we keep going, We will be having the greatest military that we ever had by the time I finish.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Mr. President, you'll have the biggest -- if tradition means anything, and I know everything is a little bit different these days...

TRUMP: Right.

BRIAN KILMEADE, HOST: -- you'll have the biggest audience for a State of the Union like address this year, bigger than any other year.

Having said that, how do you plan on capturing that opportunity for yourself and for your administration?

TRUMP: You know, Brian, all I can do is speak from the heart and say what I want to do. We have a really terrific, I believe, health care plan coming out. We have to understand, ObamaCare has been a disaster. It's way out of control, it doesn't work.

We're coming out with a health care plan that I think will be terrific. It will be very inclusive and I think it's going to do, really, what people are wanting it to do.

But I'll be talking about that. I'll be talking about the military. I'll be talking about the border. And remember this, on the border and throughout our country, we're getting the bad ones out, the bad people -- gang members, drug lords, in some cases, murderers...

KILMEADE: Has that not been communicated...

TRUMP: We're getting them out.

KILMEADE: -- do you think that that has not been communicated effectively?

TRUMP: I don't think so. No, I don't think it's been -- maybe it's my fault. But, you know, when they show people being taken out, these are people that are -- we're looking at the bad ones. And I said that from day one. I said from the day I'm president, we're getting rid of the bad ones. And a lot of people understand it.

I can tell you, the communities where we're removing people that are really trouble and really frightening to a lot of the people that live there...

DOOCY: Right.

TRUMP: -- those communities are very, very happy.

DOOCY: Sure. Mr. President, you're going to spend $54 billion, at least, more on the military. And the people who -- in our audience like that -- love this and you've said you were going to do that all along. You're going to make big spending cuts at the EPA...

TRUMP: Right.

DOOCY: And State Department.

Where does the money come from?

TRUMP: Well, the E...

DOOCY: Because it doesn't seem -- if you cut all the money from EPA and all the money from State, that's about $50 billion.

TRUMP: Well, I think the money is going to come from a revved up economy. I mean you look at the kind of numbers we're doing, we were probably GDP of a little more than 1 percent and if I can get that up to 3 or maybe more, we have a whole different ball game. It's a whole different ball game.

And that's what we're looking to do.

DOOCY: But to get the economy going, you've got to get the Affordable Care Act...

TRUMP: Right.

DOOCY: -- replaced and repealed.

TRUMP: Right.

DOOCY: And then you've got to do something about taxes and how close are we to either of those?

TRUMP: Right. We're going to be doing things having to do with other countries, because we're treated very, very unfairly. We're going to be doing cuts on so many different things.

We're also going to be -- when we help other countries, when we help them, even militarily, we're going to ask for a form of reimbursement, which right now -- I mean we have countries where we're taking care of their military, we're not being reimbursed and they're wealthy countries.

We have a lot of things happening.

We're going to get those numbers way up and we're going to take care of -- and we're going to have a lot of great friends, but we're going to get the numbers way up and we're going to get jobs back in our country. You see what I've done. Ford has announced, General Motors, Fiat has announced. They're all building big plants. They're all coming back into the United States.

They were fleeing. They were fleeing our country. And you mentioned EPA. We have, right now -- I call it the veins of the country. We have, right now hundreds and hundreds of massive deals that are tied up with environmental protection. When they are -- Scott Pruitt, who is terrific. Just got approved.

But when he gets going, those projects are going to be freed up and they're going to be sailing. And you're talking about thousands -- and millions, actually, of jobs.

Also, look at the Keystone Pipeline. Look at the...

DOOCY: It's all connected.

TRUMP: It's all -- it's all together. We're going to have jobs. We're going to have a better economy. But we're going to have jobs again for our people. They don't have the jobs.

EARHARDT: You ran on jobs. You ran on draining the swamp.

TRUMP: Yes.

EARHARDT: You ran on repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

When do you start to put pressure on Congress, the swamp, to get something done, to repeal and to replace?

TRUMP: Well, I think that Paul Ryan and his whole group have been terrific. I just left Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. And, you know, Paul is working very hard.

You know, health care is a very complex subject. If you do this, it affects nine different things. If you do that, it affects 15 different things.

I think we have a great plan and I think Congress is absolutely taking a lot of blame but it's not their fault. And don't forget, I've only been here for like four weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

TRUMP: Somebody said he hasn't done health care. They've been working on health care for 30 years.

DOOCYE: Right.

TRUMP: I've only been here for -- what is this, my fifth week?

And we're set to propose a plan and I'll be talking about it, as you know, tonight. And -- but we're all set to do a plan. And I think it's going to be something that's going to be really respected

And you take a look at what's going on with the stock market. Trillions of dollars of value have been created since I won the election -- I mean, trillions.. TRUMP: No, I mean the stock market is very enthused and that's jobs.

KILMEADE: But I just have to bring back two things in your cabinet.

TRUMP: Right.

KILMEADE: You have an OMB director, finally. He says you have to take an ax to entitlements. Your Treasury secretary says we're not touching it.

Who's right?

TRUMP: Well, I'll tell you what who's right. If the economy sails, then I'm right, because I said I'm not touching Social Security.

KILMEADE: So your OMB is wrong?

TRUMP: I'm not saying anybody is wrong. I'm just saying this. If we -- and I think this is what's going to happen, Brian. I think our country is going to sail.

DOOCY: Mr. President, you announced via Twitter the other day you're not going to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

How come?

TRUMP: Well, I am not a hypocrite. And I haven't been treated properly. And that's OK, which is fine. You know, let...

DOOCY: Well, some...

TRUMP: -- everybody treat me...

DOOCY: -- some of the left say you just can't take a joke.

TRUMP: Maybe we'll have a small -- oh, no.

Do they say that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Well, I've taken it.

You know, one of the great misconceptions, when President Obama was up -- was -- now, a long time ago, five years ago or whatever, I loved that evening. I had the greatest time...

DOOCY: You were there.

TRUMP: I was there.

KILMEADE: You were there -- you were there target of the hit.

TRUMP: I was the target.

DOOCY: You were the pinata.

TRUMP: And can I be honest?

I had the greatest time. Now, I can't act like I'm thrilled because they're telling jokes. I mean he was telling jokes I'm going to change (INAUDIBLE) the White House, the Trump House and other things.

And he was very -- I thought he did a good job. And he was very respectful and it was fun. And I enjoyed it. And I left and I told the press, they were all said, did you have a good time?

And I said it was fantastic.

The next day I read Donald Trump felt terrible about the evening. I loved the evening. I had a great time.

KILMEADE: You said before, I can take hits when it's justified.

TRUMP: Correct.

KILMEADE: Right.

TRUMP: One hundred percent.

Read more from the original source:
Donald Trump's A+/C+ presidency - Washington Post

Reporters ushered into the Oval Office to look at President Trump meeting with health-care executives on Monday tried to wring a little news out of the moment, asking the president as they were being shuffled back out the door if he thought there should be a special prosecutor to look at Russias role in the 2016 election. According to the pool report, Trump waited until the media was almost gone and then mouthed no to the executives who were still there.

Then he said something weird: I havent called Russia in 10 years.

A normal person would hear that and blink for a few seconds. It has the fingerprints of a guy who is denying accusations of marital infidelities by saying specifically that he had not ever driven another woman in his car. There are other ways to shuttle around love interests; there are other ways of contacting foreign powers and their representatives.

Its also weird because its not true. Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. When he was still just Businessman Trump, he held the Miss Universe pageant in Russia that was 2013. Maybe theres a loophole at play here: Trump didnt place that call to Putin and, sure, he showed up in Moscow but he didnt telephone anyone beforehand. Or maybe its hyperbole.

Or maybe its another example of how Trump assigns a weird moral calculus to the giving and receiving of phone calls.

Here, for example, Trump dismisses fellow wealthy-guy Mark Cuban by noting that Cuban tried to call him, but he didnt take the call.

We can use this tweet to theorize an aspect to telephone-based relationships in Trumps eyes: The person making the call is the person in the weak position.

Remember that, for Trump, there are three ways of being in touch with other people. There are in-person meetings, there are tweets and there are phone calls. Trump doesnt use email, and its safe to assume that he also therefore doesnt use direct messages on Twitter. So for him to hold a relationship with another person who isnt standing in front of him, its by phone.

He became a tabloid sensation by calling up the New York Post, often pretending to be his own publicist. The effect of that? Trump isnt the weak person making the call to try to gin up attention for himself hes the strong person who has a weak person make the weak move of calling a reporter. I mean, hes both, but thats one reason for the fiction.

Another example came after Election Day, when Bill Clinton mentioned having spoken on the phone with Trump. What did Trump correct? Who called who.

When Trump was pushing back against an unflattering New York Times story about his relationship with women in his business life, he dismissed one critic by pointing out that shed called him.

When he came under fire for speaking with Taiwan, he twice pointed out that hed been the recipient of a call, not the originator of it.

Granted, that was more to establish that he was not in the wrong by breaching American diplomatic tradition, but it also established that the foreign leader was calling him, establishing the direction of the flow of power in the relationship.

How important is the placing or receiving of calls to Trump? He spells out that bidirectionality in a tweet from shortly after the election, where he only has 140 characters to use. (Or, here, 280.)

Who did he call (weak) and who called him (strong)? Hard to say. We know, though, that Russia must have called him (as per the first tweet) since he hasnt called Russia in 10 years.

But we also now know why he told the audience in the Oval Office that he hadnt called Russia: To demonstrate that Russia isnt even important enough for him to call. Clearly he couldnt have been aware of a Russian effort to get him elected; he doesnt even care enough to pick up the phone!

Or maybe that tweet from November was the equivalent of a blurry photo of Trump in his car, Russia in his passenger seat.

See the article here:
The telephone protocol of Donald Trump, explained - Washington Post

I've written previously about how the Catholic historical experience with nativism can serve as a reminder that the church should be out front in confronting the racism and anti-Muslim bigotry that fuels contemporary strains of white nationalism. That experience is unusually relevant these days. Donald Trump won the White House in part by selling a restorationist vision for reclaiming America often rooted in racial appeals, and a nostalgic narrative that harkened back to a time when white hegemony, culturally, and politically, were assumed to be as American as eating apple pie and ice cream.

Several scholars, advocates, and researchers tackled this subject last week at an event, "How Catholics Should Respond to the Rise of the Alt-Right," co-hosted by the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America and Millennial, a journal and blog edited by young Catholics. Robert Christian, a fellow at the institute who edits Millennial, told me he hoped the forum would help draw attention to "the need for Catholics to express greater moral clarity on the nature of the alt-right and its fundamental incompatibility with Catholic moral and social teaching."

Maria Mazzenga, who manages the archives at Catholic University's American Catholic History Research Center, introduced the discussion with a helpful framework that contrasts two postures among American Catholics that have often been in tension. "Exclusionary Catholic Americanism is defensive, adopts a siege mentality, emphasizes persecution of enemies, views other religious traditions as threatening to its very existence," she said. "Inclusive Catholic Americanism seeks to reconcile American ideals of religious liberty and ethnic pluralism with the Catholic tradition. It sees continuities with its parent, Judaism, and commonalities rather than differences with other religions like Islam. It's time to put our inclusive Catholic Americanism to work."

Catholic University professor of history, Julia Young, noted that between the 1880s and the 1920s immigration policies became increasingly restrictive in the United States. (Read her recent Commonweal article on the topic here.) As a church of immigrants, Catholic leaders responded by creating an immigration bureau in 1919an office of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, a precursor to today's U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There was a movement by the Catholic Church, the bishops, to advocate for and speak out for immigrants being targeted," Young said. "The role of the Catholic Church was so important, and I hope that's the direction the church will take today." She acknowledged that bishops have opposed Trump's executive orders on refugees and immigration, but Young reminded the audience that plenty of Catholicsmany of whom helped elect Trumpaccept the new nativism directed at Muslim-Americans and people of color.

Panelist Jordan Denari Duffner, a researcher at The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University, has found disturbing evidence that Catholics are exposed to a range of anti-Muslim views that are central to the alt-right ideology in various Catholic media outlets, blogs, and bookstores. The Bridge Initiative's detailed report, "Danger & Dialogue: American Catholic Public Opinion and Portrayals of Islam, even found that Catholics who read, watch, or listen to Catholic media have more unfavorable views of Muslims than those who do not. Duffner specifically named Robert Spencer (not to be confused with alt-right leader Richard Spencer), who runs a website called Jihad Watch that was designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Spencer is Catholic. He has been cited, according to Duffner, in a number of Catholic news outlets. His books are sold at the Catholic Information Center and the bookstore of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. His speeches have aired on EWTN, the global Catholic media network.

Duffner also underscored how Breitbart News, formerly led by Donald Trump's advisor Steve Bannon, provides a potent platform for the alt-right's demonization of Muslims by perpetuating the idea that Islam is inherently violent and a political ideology rather than a diverse and complex global religion of a billion people. Christopher Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, argued that along with denouncing the extremism and bigotry central to white nationalism and the alt-right there should also be an effort to engage with people drawn to this movement. "We need to understand better as Catholics how did Steve Bannon and the alt-right come to be?" he said.

But keynote speaker Michael Sean Winters, a fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, highlighted the challenges of that approach. "The main difficulty in engaging the alt-right as if it were just another political movement is found precisely in its anti-democratic stance," said Winters, also a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. "Normally, when we as Catholics engage those with whom we disagree, both sides accept democratic norms to shape that engagement. The alt-right derides democracy and openly states its desire to undermine democracy." Winters added:

Engage, but do so warily, and only when repeatedly noting the fact that the positions the alt-right espouses are not just wrong, but contemptuous of the means by which a liberal democracy sorts out the complexities of public policy, means that we value and celebrate, and which we accord to these provocateurs even if they wish not to accord them to anyone else.

Winters pointed to the church's intellectual and moral traditions as resources to contest the resurgence of white nationalism. "It is often joked that Catholic social doctrine is the best kept secret in the Catholic church," he said. "Let it be secret no more. The most sophisticated response to both these alt-right haters, and to the ever-present difficulties of democracy, is found in that doctrine. I often say and shall say again: There is no problem facing the political life of this country that is not leavened by an encounter with Catholic social doctrine."

There is no panacea to eradicate the diseases of white nationalism and Islamophobia. The church's manifold capacitiestheological, pastoral and propheticwill be required at different places and times. Catholics don't all need to speak with the same voice or use the same tone. But the message should be unambiguous and urgent. The alt-right movement is built on an edifice of racism, social sin, and exclusion that must never be tolerated.

See the rest here:
Catholics Stand against Alt-Right Wrongs - Commonweal (blog)

"We... never thought this could happen to us," they begin...

Given the setup, you might expect to read a steamy fantasy filled with tall, blonde, Teutonic cheerleaders who love the Fatherland and can unhook a bra strap without missing a note of Wagner.

But this is no fantasy. It's real, and the screwing these ultra conservatives are getting is not at all pleasurable.

They are pissed about the way their purpose, and their experience at the MIA, has been distorted by "media" -- meaning the Star Tribune, City Pages, and, as of last night, the New York Times.

These and other outlets covered a confrontation between left-wing protesters and these men -- one of whom, according to a witness, cried out "Heil Trump!" and made a Nazi salute -- whom the lefties called "Nazis."

That term, these guys complain, is now being ascribed to "everybody to the right of Stalin." They're not Nazis! They're merely members of this "exciting* new movement of the Alt-Right."

(*Note: The movement will be less "exciting" and more "terrifying" for certain types, including but not limited to immigrants, blacks, Jews, Muslims, liberals, historians, feminists, World War II veterans, and those who have trouble manufacturing misplaced hatred.)

Now that they've cleared up that misconception, "AltRight MN" -- whose "About" page is literally just a "Minnesota for Trump" button -- can explain what happened at the museum on Saturday. First, they were hacked. Someone from the left-wing Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sneaked into their secret chat room "by pretending to be a Trump supporter."

Then, they were attacked. Two AltRight MN guys were jumped inside the museum "simply for how they looked."

If you are attacked for "how you looked," and "how you looked" is "like a neo-Nazi," and you are a neo-Nazi... is it still "simply"because of how you looked?

Another "Trump supporter" was "violently attacked and maced." Cops called to the scene found "an illegal knife" on one of the IWW side, though they didn't arrest him.

"Why not?" AltRight MN asks. "Are they supporting the actions of these leftist thugs?"

Probably not!

This was all an unnecessarily violent response to what was supposed to be a fun little outing for a few well-meaning, white-leaning -- oops, right-leaning patrons of the arts. Specifically, the old stuff.

"We were there only to meet a few new faces and enjoy the Minneapolis Institute of Arts collection of traditional art."

And who doesn't love "traditional art"?

Anyway, at last, the media's "lies" about what happened at the museum are corrected.

Pay no mind to this blog post write-up from the IWW point of view, which claims it was one of the AltRight MN guys who had a "large folding knife," and who "started a physical brawl with the anti-fascists when they questioned him about his [Nazi flag] shirt."

Or to the photo of a guy who appears to be giving a Nazi salute. That's out of context. He is actually just demonstrating that the men of AltRight MN care a lot about "traditional art," and they... have high standards.

See the rest here:
Alt-Right museum-goers respond: We're not Nazis, we just like 'traditional art' - City Pages