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Trump called out Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R- S.C.) on Aug. 17 for their criticism of his leadership. Here are 4 other politicians Trump has targeted on Twitter. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

President Trump went on the offensive Thursday against two Republican senators, attacking them for their recent criticisms of his divisive governing style and response to the violence in Charlottesville.

In a morning tweetstorm, Trump lambasted Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), calling Graham publicity-seeking and Flake toxic and endorsing a primary challenger to Flake in his reelection bid next year. Flake recently published a book that was highly critical of Trump.

Trump appeared to throw his support behind former Arizona state senator Kelli Ward, whois already mounting a primary challenge against Flake.

Flake wrote in his book that Republicans abandoned their principles in the face of Trump's unorthodox campaign and surrendered to the politics of anger. The party gave in to the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate, Flake wrote in Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. These are the spasms of a dying party.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says the Republican president in the White House is not displaying the conservatism his party should be embracing. In his new book, "Conscience of a Conservative," Flake says populism and protectionism are as threatening to the GOP now as the New Deal was in 1960. (Dalton Bennett,Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)

Ward is an osteopathic physician who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2016, using the senator's advanced age against him. This time, Ward is hoping to use Flake's opposition to Trump to her advantage.

Jeff Flake has been unable to effectively serve the people of Arizona. Thats the big story, she said in an interview last week. Thats why he has such dismal job approval ratings. Hes been there almost 20 years and has accomplished really nothing. His values dont align with his constituents and its time for him to be sent back home and send somebody to Washington, D.C. who can accomplish the America First agenda that the president put forth but that the American people embraced across this entire country.

Ward said that she's especially upset with Flake's recent words and actions on health care and taxes even though he voted for the GOP health-care bill and is supportive of attempts to overhaul the tax code.

So where has Flake gone wrong?

On taxes, he's already come out with his opposition, Ward claimed. Rather than saying 'Im looking forward to what Donald Trump puts forward so that we can accomplish the goal of lowering taxes across the board and making sure that our American economy thrives,' he puts a negative spin on it from the beginning.

And on health care, she said she's upset with his behavior I'll call it his behavior on Obamacare.

When the bill was over in the House, Jeff Flake was over in the Senate telling reporters that there just was no appetite for full repeal of Obamacare in the Senate. He was whispering to his donors in the hospital corporations and the insurance industry not to worry.

Ward specifically cited a Washington Post story from May that included Flake telling constituents that he had a hard time believing that the Senate would vote to pass health-care legislation before the August recess.

Flake's campaign spokesman responded in a statement, You don't serve Arizona by cutting backroom deals in Washington, D.C. That's why Senator Flake will always fight for the people of our state.

McCain tweeted a defense of Flake.

Trump also slammed Graham, who was among the Republicans who criticized Trump for failing to offer a full-throated condemnation of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The president waited two days before denouncing the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan groups that organized the Unite the Right event, only to reverse course Tuesday to again blame both sides for the violence that left a counterprotester, Heather Heyer, dead. Two police officers also died in a helicopter crash.

[Trumps isolation grows in the wake of Charlottesville]

In going after Graham, Trump suggested the senator, who also ran for president in 2016, was still smarting from his loss to Trump in the Republican primaries.

Graham responded with a statement in which he said Trump's handling of the Charlottesville violence was being praised by some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation as our President please fix this. History is watching us all.

Trump's tweets made clear that the president is willing to challenge fellow Republican lawmakers and potentially imperil their reelection chances if they criticize him. The GOP holds a narrow 52-48 margin in the Senate, though most political analysts say it will be difficult for Democrats to win back the chambers in 2018 because ofthe election map favoring Republicans.

But Trump also needs to maintain party loyalty to help pass his legislative agenda, including upcoming efforts at tax revision and, perhaps, infrastructure. McCain, for example, cast a crucial vote against the GOP's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, prompting Trump to attack him repeatedly including yet again on Tuesday during his heated news conference in New York.

President Trump's relationship with Congress has become more and more strained as he struggles to find legislative wins. Now he's going after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a key leader in his own party. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

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Deepening GOP split, Trump attacks Republican senators Graham, Flake as 'publicity-seeking,' 'toxic' - Washington Post

AUSTIN, Texas Signs of a fractured Republican Party in Texas have Democrats hoping to seize an opportunity to gain some ground.

They say Hillary Clinton won 10 Texas districts in 2016 that Republicans currently hold. Progressive Texas groups, which call their collective One Texas Resistance, told state leaders Wednesday to "respect us or expect us."

"We will not allow them to harm our communities, our kids, or rob us of our rights and our basic humanity," said Emmitt Shelling of the Transgender Education Network of Texas.

They called Gov. Greg Abbott's conservative special session agenda "distracting and destructive." They're fighting against the so-called sanctuary cities law lawmakers passed this session and that's facing a court challenge.

Leaders also said they plan to challenge several abortion restrictions passed this summer.

"We know that these laws do absolutely nothing to protect our lives," said Amanda Williams of the Lilith Fund.

Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, said Hillary Clinton won at least 42 percent of the vote last November in 20 districts that Republicans control.

"In 10 of those districts, Hillary Clinton won," he said. "Our message today to Republicans is that if you're not representing the values of hardworking Texans, we are coming after you."

State Republican Party Chair James Dickey says he's not at all worried.

"Republicans in Texas are happy with the progress that we've made just in the last few weeks and want to see more progress."

Dickey said the Legislature accomplished half of the ten priorities Republicans laid out last year. There's one priority, however, that seems to keep dividing House and Senate lawmakers: property taxes.

"We didn't see major progress on that," he said.

The stalemate led to flurry of GOP in-fighting that One Texas Resistance hopes to seize.

Lawmakers could be forced to come back to redraw congressional maps. A federal court called out two districts Tuesday for being discriminatory. That includes Lloyd Doggett's district, which spans from Austin to San Antonio.

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Texas Democrats to Republicans: Respect us or expect us - Spectrum News

President Donald Trump addresses the 2016 American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. Following the president's remarks on violence in Charlottesville, AIPAC urged officials to "reject moral equivalence." | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Jewish Republicans rejected Donald Trumps comments in response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it doesnt appear the president is facing further consequences from the small but vital GOP constituency over what they saw as a failure to adequately denounce crowds that shouted anti-Semitic chants and hoisted Nazi flags last weekend.

The Republican Jewish Coalition in a statement called for Trump to show greater leadership after he seemed Tuesday to equate neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan demonstrators with those protesting them. Matt Brooks, executive director of the RJC, would not say whether members plan any further steps to warn the president.

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"People are scared and frightened and disgusted by the events of Charlottesville," Brooks told POLITICO on Thursday. "It's incredible in this time and place in our American history that we're dealing with the scourge of vile neo-Nazis and white supremacists. It's just intolerable."

Brooks also would not disclose any conversations with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who sits on the RJC's board but has not personally weighed in.

Still, some Republican strategists are nervous about turning off a group that regularly votes, raises money and donates to candidates. Trumps daughter Ivanka and her family are Jewish, as are several of the presidents top aides. But his statement that there were very fine people amid those protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue who chanted, among other things, Jews will not replace us shocked supporters and critics alike.

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"Getting this right is life and death for the Republican Party. You can't have a Republican Party that people believe is a racist party," said Rick Tyler, a Trump critic and former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz, who aggressively courted Republican Jews in his own 2016 presidential bid. "The Republican Jewish community provides a lot of support for the Republican Party, particularly financial support."

The RJC which asked Trump to provide greater moral clarity in rejecting racism, bigotry, and antisemitism was more direct than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which issued a statement Thursday urging all elected officials to reject moral equivalence between those who promote hate and those who oppose it.

But AIPACs statement was nonetheless a striking rebuke given the groups past praise of Trumps hawkish stance on Israel and as-yet-unfulfilled vow to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff, one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress, called on "White Supremacists, the KKK, neo-Nazis and all groups that preach hate" to be "explicitly condemned." The other, Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, followed Trump in placing blame on both sides for violence that culminated in the death of a woman after a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

But Zeldin added: "These two sides are not equal. They are different."

Nonpartisan Jewish groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, have been more direct in criticizing Trump's rhetoric.

It's not the first time Trump has angered the American Jewish community. Many were baffled and offended when his White House put out a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that made no mention of the Jews who were killed.

Fred Zeidman, a member of the RJC board of directors and a former George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, praised his group's leadership for taking a stand after the Charlottesville violence.

"We know the issues that evolve from remaining silent, and we can't remain silent," he told POLITICO on Thursday. "We know what happens when we remain silent."

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Jewish Republicans reject Trump's take on Charlottesville violence - Politico

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers.

During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal "outsourcer in chief" for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor.

Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs.

In the case of the cobalt mining that is necessary for the production of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, thousands of child laborers in Southern Africa are worked to exhaustion.

In the 1960s, campuses boycotted grapes to support Cesar Chavez's unionization of farm workers. Yet it is unlikely that there will be any effort to boycott tech companies that use lithium-ion batteries produced from African-mined cobalt.

Progressives demand higher taxes on the wealthy. They traditionally argue that tax gimmicks and loopholes are threats to the republic.

Yet few seem to care that West Coast conglomerates such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Starbucks filtered hundreds of billions in global profits through tax havens such as Bermuda, shorting the United States billions of dollars in income taxes.

The progressive movement took hold in the late 19th century to "trust-bust," or break up corporations that had cornered the markets in banking, oil, steel and railroads. Such supposedly foul play had inordinately enriched "robber baron" buccaneers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan.

Yet today, the riches of multibillionaires dwarf the wealth of their 19th-century predecessors.

Facebook, with 2 billion monthly global users, has now effectively cornered social media.

Google has monopolized Internet searches, and modulates users' search results to accommodate its own business profiteering.

Amazon is America's new octopus. Its growing tentacles incorporate not just online sales but also media and food retailing.

Yet there are no modern-day progressive muckrakers in the spirit of Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris and Lincoln Steffens, warning of the dangers of techie monopolies or the astronomical accumulation of wealth. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook are worth nearly $1 trillion each.

In the Obama era, the nation received all sorts of progressive lectures on the downsides of being super-rich.

Obama remonstrated about spreading the wealth, knowing when not to profit and realizing when one has made enough money. He declared that entrepreneurs did not build their own businesses without government help.

Yet such sermonizing never seemed to include Facebook, Starbucks or Amazon.

The tech and social-media industries pride themselves on their counterculture transparency, their informality and their 1960s-like allegiance to free thought and free speech. Yet Google just fired one of its engineers for simply questioning the company line that sexual discrimination and bias alone account for the dearth of female Silicon Valley engineers.

What followed were not voices of protest. Instead, Google-instilled fear and silence ensued, in the fashion of George Orwell's "1984."

On matters such as avoiding unionization, driving up housing prices, snagging crony-capitalist subsidies from the government and ignoring the effects of products on public safety (such as texting while driving), Silicon Valley is about as reactionary as they come.

Why, then, do these companies earn a pass from hypercritical progressives?

Answer: Their executives have taken out postmodern insurance policies.

The new elite are overwhelmingly left-wing. They head off criticism by investing mostly in the Democratic Party, the traditional font of social and political criticism of corporate wealth.

In 2012, for example, Obama won Silicon Valley by more than 40 percentage points. Of the political donations to presidential candidates that year from employees at Google and Apple, more than 90 percent went to Obama.

One of the legacies of the Obama era was the triumph of green advocacy and identity politics over class.

No one has grasped that reality better that the new billionaire barons of the West Coast. As long as they appeared cool, as they long as they gave lavishly to left-wing candidates, and as long as they mouthed liberal platitudes on global warming, gay marriage, abortion and identity politics, they earned exemption from progressive scorn.

The result was that they outsourced, offshored, monopolized, censored and made billions without much fear of media muckraking, trust-busting politicians, unionizing activists or diversity lawsuits.

Hip billionaire corporatism is one of the strangest progressive hypocrisies of our times.

Victor Davis Hanson is a historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

author@victorhanson.com

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Victor Davis Hanson: Progressives overlook faults of today's tycoons - The Columbus Dispatch

President Trump first asked reporters to define the "alt-right," before saying members of the "alt-left" were also to blame for violence in Charlottesville, while taking questions from reporters on Aug. 15 at Trump Tower in New York. (The Washington Post)

In a chilling Tuesday news conference, President Trump named one of the many sides he has said are to blame for the weekends violence in Charlottesville: the alt-left. But as much as white supremacists rejoiced at his use of the term, they did not invent it. Liberals did.

The term alt-left has become a recent favorite of neo-Nazis, and Trumps embrace of the phrase is likely to propel it into his broader bases vocabulary. Yet its unlikely anyone wearing a Make America Great Again hat saw the term where it first caught attention in the news media: in the March edition of Vanity Fair magazine, atop an essay by James Wolcott titled Why the Alt-Left Is a Problem, Too. Or where it had already been springing up with surprising frequency: on the Facebook pages and Twitter feedsof movers and shakers closely associated with Clintonworld.

The 2016 Democratic primary exposed a long-brewing schism in the liberal order. Supporters of Bernie Sanders were fed up with the status quo and sought to tear it apart, while Hillary Clintons cohort preached a more pragmatic progressivism. The best hope of the Clintonites was to cast Sanders supporters as not just unreasonably radical but also a bit sexist and racist too hence the Bernie bro, their caricature of a childish white man who just cant bear the thought of a female president.

The Bernie bros were exactly the people center-left Democrats were describing when they first said alt-left. They didnt just mean the antifa, or anti-fascists. Thats an amorphous enough term already, encompassing both the black bloc and other groups devoted to denying neo-Nazis a public platform but less inclined to set limousines on fire. They didnt even just mean those who fit the technical definition of socialist, communist or anarchist. They meant anyone who wanted to push the political conversation beyond the boundaries of the 2016 Democratic Party platform: anyone who advocated for universal health care, free college or a $15 minimum wage.

Heather Heyer, according to that definition, belonged to the alt-left.

Its easy to see why alt-left was the perfect phrase for the job Clinton Democrats set out to accomplish. Because it sounded so much like alt-right, it made Sanders fans seem too extreme to stomach even violent. It also made them seem more sexist (that explains their lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, those using the term might say), or racist (now we know why theyre disillusioned with Barack Obama, or why they wont come around to Kamala Harris, theyd argue).

And its not as though the far left doesnt do the same sort of labeling of Clintonite Democrats calling them centrists as a veiled insult even when their views are measurably more progressive than the average Americans, or deeming them neoliberal to establish distance between them and what hardcore leftists see as the true liberal cause.

The alt-left label, as it turns out, is much more insidious. It creates a false equivalence at the extremes and plays into racists hands. White supremacists want the far left to look more sexist and racist the same way center-left Democrats want them to it gives them a foil. Of course they greeted Trumps Tuesday proclamation with glee: While alt-right is designed to make neo-Nazis look more mainstream, alt-left is designed to make their enemies look less so. White nationalists had already pulled off a remarkable trick by bringing a moniker that obscured their hateful worldview into the national lexicon. And theyve achieved another coup by snatching alt-left away from the Democrats and pushing it so hard that it eventually made its way out of the presidents mouth.

This is far from the first time a clever center-left coinage has flipped sides remember when fake news was a cry of liberal outrage against the glut of online conspiracy theories that culminated in a gunman traveling to a D.C. pizzeria to take out a nonexistent Clinton-connected child sex ring?

The left is eating itself alive. Fake news at least was designed to delegitimize a dangerous enemy. The center-lefts use of alt-left demonizes people who, when it comes down to it, should be their allies. Theres a real debate to had about health care, free college and the $15 minimum wage. Its happening now, and it will continue to happen through 2018 and beyond. But the right way to have that debate has never been by playing semantic tricks to score points. Its by being honest about the policies both we and those we disagree with stand for. Weve just learned how perilous the alternative can be.

See the article here:
The alt-right didn't invent 'alt-left.' Liberals did. - Washington Post