Mediaboss Marketing

Sam Harris, the atheist philosopher and neuroscientist, has recently been using his popular Waking Up podcast to discuss Donald Trump, whom he abhors, with an ideologically diverse series of guests, all of whom believe that the president is a vile huckster.

This began to wear on some of his listeners. Wasnt Harris always warning against echo chambers? Didnt he believe in rigorous debate with a positions strongest proponents? At their urging, he extended an invitation to a person that many of those listeners regard as President Trumps most formidable defender: Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, who believes that Trump is a master persuader.

Their conversation was posted online late last month. It is one of the most peculiar debates about a president I have ever encountered. And it left me marveling that parts of Trumps base think well of Adams when his views imply such negative things about them.

Those implications are most striking with respect to extreme views that Trump expressed during the campaign. Harris and Adams discussed two examples during the podcast: Trumps call to deport 12 million illegal immigrants from the United States, a position that would require vast, roving deportation forces, home raids, and the forced removal even of law-abiding, undocumented single mothers of American children; and Trumps call to murder the family members of al-Qaeda or ISIS terrorists.

Trump took those positions not because he believes them, Adams argued, but to mirror the emotional state of the voters he sought and to open negotiations on policy.

Harris expressed bafflement that such a strategy would work:

Harris: If I'm going to pretend to be so callous as to happily absorb those facts, like send them all back, they don't belong here, or in the ISIS case, we'll torture their kids, we'll kill their kids, it doesn't matter, whatever worksif that's my opening negotiation, I am advertising a level of callousness, and a level of unconcern for the reality of human suffering that will follow from my actions, should I get what I ostensibly want, that it's a nearly psychopathic ethics I am advertising as my strong suit.

So how this becomes attractive to people, how this resonates with their valuesI get what you said, people are worried about immigration and jihadism, I share those concerns. But when you cross the line into this opening overture that has these extreme consequences on its face, things that get pointed out in 30 seconds whenever he opens his mouth on a topic like this, I don't understand how that works for him with anyone.

Adams: Let me give you a little thought experiment here. We've got people who are on the far right. We've got people on the far left. In your perfect world, would it be better to move the people on the far right toward the middle or the people on the far left toward the middle? Which would be a preferred world for you?

Harris: Moving everyone toward the middle, certainly on most points, would be a very good thing.

Adams: So what you've observed with President Trump through his pacing and emotional compatibility with his base is that prior to Inauguration Day, there were a lot of people in this country who were saying, 'Yeah yeah, round them all up. Send all 12 million back tomorrow.'

When was the last time you heard anybody on the right complaining about that? Because what happened was, immigration went down 50 to 70 percent, whatever the number was, just based on the fact that we would get tough on immigration. And the right says, Oh, okay, we didn't get nearly what we asked for, but our leader, who we trust, who we love, has backed off of that, and we're going to kind of go with that, because he is doing some good things that we like. And we don't like the alternative either.

So this monster that we elected, this Hitler-dictator-crazy-guy, he managed to be the only guy who could have, and I would argue always intended, to move the far right toward the middle. You saw it, you know, we can observe it with our own eyes. We don't see the right saying, Oh no, I hate President Trump. He's got to round up those undocumented people like he said early in the campaign, or else I'm bailing on him. None of that happened. He paced them, and then he led them toward a reasonable situation, which I would say we're in.

I dont agree with parts of Adamss analysis. But as he tells it, Trump targeted voters whod be attracted rather than repelled by calls for policies that would inflict great suffering; he told those voters things that he didnt really mean to gain their emotional trust; and all along, he probably intended to go to Washington and do something else. That sounds a lot like the way that Trump voters describe the career politicians who they hate: emotionally manipulative liars who will say anything to get elected, get to Washington, and betray their base by moving left on immigration.

Now consider the most extraordinary exchange in the podcast, when Harris attempts to explain his confusion that not everyone regards Trump as a vile huckster:

Harris: Everything you need to know about Trump's ethics were revealed in the Trump University scandal. This is a guy who is having his employees pressure poor, elderly people to max out their credit cards in exchange for fake knowledge.

Adams: Well, hold on. You understood that to be a license deal, right?

Harris: Yeah, but I understand that to be the kind of thing that he would have to know enough about to know what he was doing. If he only found out about it after the fact, that's not the kind of thing you'd defend, it's the kind of thing you'd be mortified about. And you would apologize for and pay reparations for if you're this rich guy who has all the money you claim to have.

Adams: Unless you were a master persuader who knew that if you ever backed down from anything, people would expect you to back down in the future from other things.

Note that Adams hypothesizes that Trump would not back down even if he were in the wrong and innocents were hurt as a consequence, because it might hurt him personally. A person who wrongs innocents, then hides it because he puts a higher priority on preserving his public persona than justice, is not a person to be trusted with power!

Harris: But what you're describing is a totally unethical person. This is the problem for me. So let me just give you a couple more points here. People will say that all politicians are liars, or all politicians have something weird in their backstory. But there are very few politicians walking around with something that ugly in their backstory that they haven't repaired.

Adams: Let me just clarify. When I said that it was a license deal, as opposed to a business that he was actively runningin the Dilbert world, I do a lot of license deals. And have in the past. The nature of those is that you're giving your brand and your name and then you're not really paying attention to the management of the company. So there are two possibilities here. One is what you described, that he knew the details and he was okay with it, which would be problematic for me, and I'm positive it would be problematic for 100 percent of Trump's supporters if that was the case. Now, if it was a typical license deal where you don't really know exactly what people are doing and you're not paying attention because you've got, in this case, 400 companies with his name on them

Harris: His whole life is a license deal for the most parteven his real estate empire is a license deal.

Adams: So if it were the case that he were treating it like every other license deal there's a high likelihood that he didn't know about the details until it was too late. Now once he found out the details, how he handled it in court is yet another separate case.

Lets pause here. What Harris understandably didnt know off the top of his head is that Trump University was not a typical licensing deal. According to The Washington Post, court documents revealed that the Trump Organization owned 93 percent of Trump University. As well, beginning in 2005, New York State Education Department officials told the company to change its name because they deemed it misleading. And Trump appeared in ads for the enterprise, where he said, I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you. Obviously, Trump did not believe that anyone who saw the advertisement could be turned into a success in real estate, and the ad represented that Trump would be doing the turning.

Harris: But even granting you that, it's another separate case that says everything about the man's ethics.

Adams: It says everything about his ethics if he was aware of it at the time.

Harris: No, no, if you're aware of it in the aftermath. If I created some deal, you know, The Sam Harris Waking Up Podcast UniversityI mean, first of all, the fact that he would license it out to other conmen who were unscrupulous, and not do proper vetting but claim he had, I mean there's a whole commercial with him talking about how these are the geniuses who will be instructing you in this incredibly expensive but profitable enterprise.

If you did all that you're already a schmuck.

But imagine I had done that, and I'm so busy, I've got 400 different businesses, and I just didn't really understand, I got conned, and got lured into doing this with people I didn't totally vet. In the aftermath, I would be horrified! If I found out that someone had their life savings ripped from them by conmen who I had licensed, right, and I'm this billionaire, I would atone for that as much as could possibly be done. I mean, you have to do that!

Adams: Now Sam, when you say you would atone for it, let's talk about the financial part of that atonement. Would you then negotiate with the people who were complaining to figure out what was an appropriate payment?

Harris: It would be obviously indefensible, and I would immediately pay back everything that was lost, and probably more, because there's all the pain and suffering associated with it. You have to make people whole.

Adams: But would you give them whatever they asked for? Like hey, give me 10 million dollars

Harris: Well no, there has to be some rational consideration of what the cost is. But again, you know the spirit in which he defended this, right? He hasn't admitted that this was a sham. It's of a piece with everything else he has represented about himself. He's a genius whose done nothing but help the world and the world is ungrateful because they can't recognize it. And all the rest is fake news.

Adams: But let me ask you againand by the way, I want to be very clear that there's nothing about Trump University that I defend.

Harris: But that should mean something to you!

There were, in fact, things about Trump University that Adams was defending. In an effort to persuade, he was portraying himself as an expert on licensing deals, and suggesting that Trump may well have been innocent of any wrongdoing beyond not knowing what the folks who licensed his name were getting up to. Because Adams is not a master persuader, Harris was able to knock down that argument, even without knowing some of the facts that made it obviously wrong.

Thats when the conversation arrived at a place Adams often inhabits: claiming he doesnt defend vile or hucksterish behavior from Trump, but continuing to act as Trumps booster.

Adams: But I also think it needs to be put into its clearest context. And the clearest context is, there were people who used the legal system for his complaints, and Trump used the legal system the way it was used, to negotiate, and part of that negotiation is, 'Hey, I'm taking you to court.' 'Well, go ahead, I'll take you to court.' So that's how you negotiate in the legal context. When it was done he paid them back as the legal process probably was going to come out that way whether he was elected president or not.

Harris: It shouldn't have had to go to court. The fact that it had to go to court is a sign of his litigiousness, his defensiveness, his not owning the problem. And who knows how many other scandals like this are in his past where the people couldn't afford to go to court? We actually know a lot about the way he built buildings, insofar as he actually built themand he screwed hundreds if not thousands of people, and these are people who couldn't afford to take them to court. This guy's reputation is so well known.

At this point Adams repeats a persuasive tactic he had already usedon Trump University, he mentioned his own experience of licensing Dilbert, as if it gave his opinions special weight; in this next part, he casts himself as a construction expert. Factual context for the following part of the conversation can be found in this USA Today investigation.

Adams: Have you ever been involved in a big construction project? Because I've done a few. And what do you do when a subcontractor doesn't perform the way that you want them to perform?

Harris: That's one description of what has happened, but again, you're ignoring the fact that he has a unique reputation for screwing people. And this is something, journalism didn't do its job before the election to get this out

Adams: Well, I would agree he has a reputation. But what is the source of that reputation? It's the people that didn't get paid, right?

Harris: But again, the fact that Trump University exists, and the fact that he handled it the way he did, tells me everything I need to know about him. Everything. Literally everything Scott.

Adams: Did you just change the subject?

Harris: No. I can see his real estate career through the lens of Trump University. If you give me Trump University, I can tell you what kind of developer he's going to be. And how he's going to treat his subs.

Adams: Well, that's another analogy problem, that Trump University is an analogy

Harris: No, it's because people's ethics tend to cohere. If you think you can screw someone mercilessly when they're under your power in one context, you are the kind of person, I will predict, who will be screwing people under your power in other contexts, unless you've got some kind of multiple personality disorder.

Adams: Are there no stories you're aware of in which President Trump has done things which he was not required to do which were considered a kindness?

Harris: Well, I'll give you two other points which I think aren't entangled with these wrinkles, which kind of make the same point So take his career as a beauty pageant host and owner, and the stories well attested of him being the creep who keeps barging into the dressing room so he can look at the beauty pageant contestants, these 18-year-old girls who are essentially his employees, so he can catch them naked. So there's doing that over and over again.

And then add his career as a pseudo-philanthropist. So here's a great example. There's this ribbon-cutting ceremony for a children's school that was serving kids with AIDS. This was back in the 90s. And hes pretending to be one of the big donors, and just to get a photo op with the mayor of New York and I think the former mayor of New York, and the real donors to this charity, he jumps on stage, pretends that he belongs there at the ribbon cutting. He never gave a dime to this charity! No one knew he was coming, he literally crashed this party to pretend that he was this big-time philanthropist. Well you may say, this is brilliant PR, right?

It's completely immoral PR.

If I had done this you wouldn't be on this podcast. If you found out these things about me, Sam Harris pretends he gives to charity when he doesn't, he barges into the dressing rooms of his teenage employees so he can catch them naked, and he's got this thing called Harris University that he had to get sued to apologize for, in fact he never apologized for, those three things about me, you wouldn't be on this podcast, and for good reason. But yet you're saying you would elect me president of the United States.

Adams: Yeah I would go even further and say that if you even knew the secret life of any of our politicians we would impeach all of them.

Harris: That's not true.

Adams: The problem is that people tend to be fairly despicable when you drill down.

Harris: Do you think Obama is trailing things of this magnitude? Manifest character flaws of this magnitude?

Adams: Well, I won't name names, but I would say it would be more common than not common, for especially males to have sketchy behavior with the opposite sex.

Harris: Not this level of sketchy behavior. I mean, I'm not going to go to the Billy Bush groping tape which I think is

Adams: Keep in mind that President Trump's past is far more public than other people. So you're going to see the warts as well as the good stuff. But let me stop acting as if I disagree with the general claim that you're making, that he has done things that you and I might not do in the same situation, and would disapprove of. That is common and would be shared by Trump supporters as well.

Notice the pattern here.

Harris offers an indictment of Trump; Adams tries to undercut it; Adams fails; Adams asserts that he has been misleading us about his real views in the course of doing so; then Adams grants the original indictment, but insists there are mitigating factors:

Harris: But then you seem to give it no ethical weight.

Adams: Here's the proposition. He came in and he said in these very words, I'm no angel. But I'm going to do these things for you. Now he created a situation where for his self-interest, if you imagine he's the most selfish, narcissistic, egotistical human who ever lived, he only cares about himself, he put himself in the position where there was exactly one way for any of those things to go right for him, which is to do a really, really frickin' good job, and to imagine that he wants to do anything but the best job for the country now, now that he's in the position, and probably even when he was running, is beyond ludicrous.

It is fascinating that Adams counts the pronouncement, Im no angel, as a point in Trumps favor, as if unapologetically acknowledging moral depravity lessens its weight.

And that isnt even the most ludicrous part of his argument.

Upon being elected, it is in the interest of every president to do a really, really good job. As Harris put it, I will grant you that he cares about his reputation to some degree, and his reputation would be enhanced if at the end of four years or the end of eight years more likely, he was described as the greatest president we ever had. I think he would like that. If you could give him a magic wand and he could wave it in any direction, he would want to leave being spoken of as the next Lincoln or the next Jefferson. In that sense, his interests and the country's interests would be aligned.

So Trump shares that incentive with every president. And as Harris added, there are other ways in which Trumps interests depart from Americas interests far more than other presidents: the profits and overseas dealings of the Trump organization, for one thing, and Trumps murky relationship with Russian oligarchs, for another.

All that aside, even perfectly aligned incentives are worthless if a politician lacks the moral compass and practical skills to govern well. The strongest anti-Trump argument is that he is unfit, regardless of what he wants for Americansthat he is governing about as well as he managed the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, a property that he wanted to succeed but that ended in ruin.

Stripped of all the evasive rhetorical tactics, Adamss case for Trump amounts to this: Trump is a master persuader, as evidenced by his success manipulating voters with morally odious positions that he didnt believe and never intended to executebut Americans shouldnt be bothered by the vileness or the hucksterism, which Adams regards as mostly harmless, because its in Trumps personal interests to be successful, and as Adams later argued, Americans should want a guy who will succeed in the White House more than a guy who is moral or honest.

Now, personally, I dont believe that Trump is a master persuader. I think hes a guy who started out with unusual amounts of money, name recognition, and media coverage, three hugely important factors for a pol; ran against an unusually disliked opponent; and still managed to lose the popular vote by a margin of almost three million. But whether or not Trump is a master persuader is really beside my point here.

My point is that Harris had been using his podcast to discuss Trump with an ideologically diverse series of anti-Trump guests who believe the president is a vile hucksterand then, when he agreed to host the pro-Trump guest who his pro-Trump listeners flagged as Trumps most formidable defender, that guest essentially conceded that Trump has done all sorts of vile things and rose to power via lies, but that its all for the best because he has an incentive to do a really good job. To accept all that would be to cede any grounds for objecting to future politicians who behave immorally, inject cruel policy proposals into the national debate, and lie to get elected. If Adams truly is the most formidable defender of the Trump presidency, then the best defense of the president is grounded in corrosive moral nihilism.

Continued here:
Scott Adams's Nihilistic Defense of Donald Trump - The Atlantic

Early last November, just before Election Day, Barack Obama was driven through the crisp late-night gloom of the outskirts of Charlotte, as he barnstormed North Carolina on behalf of Hillary Clinton. He was in no measure serene or confident. The polls, the analytics, remained in Clintons favor, yet Obama, with the unique vantage point of being the first African-American President, had watched as, night after night, immense crowds cheered and hooted for a demagogue who had launched a business career with blacks-need-not-apply housing developments in Queens and a political career with a racist conspiracy theory known as birtherism. During his speech in Charlotte that night, Obama warned that no one really changes in the Presidency; rather, the office magnifies who you already are. So if you accept the support of Klan sympathizers before youre President, or youre kind of slow in disowning it, saying, Well, I dont know, then thats how youll be as President.

Donald Trumps ascent was hardly the first sign that Americans had not uniformly regarded Obamas election as an inspiring chapter in the countrys fitful progress toward equality. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, had branded him the food-stamp President. In the right-wing and white-nationalist media, Obama was, variously, a socialist, a Muslim, the Antichrist, a liberal fascist, who was assembling his own Hitler Youth. A high-speed train from Las Vegas to Anaheim that was part of the economic-stimulus package was a secret effort to connect the brothels of Nevada to the innocents at Disneyland. He was, by nature, suspect. You just look at the bodylanguage, and theres somethinggoing on, Trump said, last summer.In the meantime, beginning on the day of Obamas first inaugural, the Secret Service fielded an unprecedented number of threats against the Presidents person.

And so, speeding toward yet another airport last November, Obama seemed like a weary man who harbored a burning seed of apprehension. Weve seen this coming, he said. Donald Trump is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. What surprised me was the degree to which those tactics and rhetoric completely jumped the rails.

For half a century, in fact, the leaders of the G.O.P. have fanned the lingering embers of racial resentment in the United States. Through shrewd political calculation and rhetoric, from Richard Nixons Southern strategy to the latest charges of voter fraud in majority-African-American districts, doing so has paid off at the ballot box. There were no governing principles, Obama said. There was no one to say, No, this is going too far, this isnt what we stand for.

Last week, the world witnessed Obamas successor in the White House, unbound and unhinged, acting more or less as Obama had predicted. In 2015, a week after Trump had declared his candidacy, he spoke in favor of removing the Confederate flag from South Carolinas capitol: Put it in the museum and let it go. But, last week, abandoning the customary dog whistle of previous Republican culture warriors, President Trump made plain his indulgent sympathy for neo-Nazis, Klan members, and unaffiliated white supremacists, who marched with torches, assault rifles, clubs, and racist and anti-Semitic slogans through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. One participant even adopted an ISIS terror tactic, driving straight into a crowd of people peaceably demonstrating against the racists. Trump had declared an America First culture war in his Inaugural Address, and nowas his poll numbers dropped, as he lost again and again in the courts and in Congress, as the Mueller investigation delved into his miserable business history, as more and more aides leaked their dismayhe had cast his lot with the basest of his base. There were some very fine people among the white nationalists, he said, and their culture should not be threatened.

Who could have predicted it? Anyone, really. Two years ago, the Daily Stormer, the foremost neo-Nazi news site in the country, called on white men to vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests. Trump never spurned this current of his support. He invited it, exploited it. With Stephen Bannon, white nationalism won prime real estate in the West Wing. Bannon wrote much of the inaugural speech, and was branded The Great Manipulator in a Time cover story that bruised the Presidential ego. But Bannon has been marginalized for months. Last Friday, in the wake of Charlottesville, Trump finally pushed him out. He is headed back to Breitbart News. But he was staff; his departure is hardly decisive. The culture of this White House was, and remains, Trumps.

When Trump was elected, there were those who considered his history and insisted that this was a kind of national emergency, and that to normalize this Presidency was a dangerous illusion. At the same time, there were those who, in the spirit of patience and national comity, held that Trump was our President, and that he must be given a chance. Has he had enough of a chance yet? After his press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower last Tuesday, when he ignored the scripted attempts to regulate his impulses and revealed his true allegiances, there can be no doubt about who he is. This is the inescapable fact: on November 9th, the United States elected a dishonest, inept, unbalanced, and immoral human being as its President and Commander-in-Chief. Trump has daily proven unyielding to appeals of decency, unity, moderation, or fact. He is willing to imperil the civil peace and the social fabric of his country simply to satisfy his narcissism and to excite the worst inclinations of his core followers.

This latest outrage has disheartened Trumps circle somewhat; business executives, generals and security officials, advisers, and even family members have semaphored their private despair. One of the more lasting images from Trumps squalid appearance on Tuesday was that of his chief of staff, John Kelly, who stood listening to him with a hangdog look of shame. But Trump still retains the support of roughly a third of the country, and of the majority of the Republican electorate. The political figure Obama saw as a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party has not yet come unmoored from the Partys base.

The most important resistance to Trump has to come from civil society, from institutions, and from individuals who, despite their differences, believe in constitutional norms and have a fundamental respect for the values of honesty, equality, and justice. The imperative is to find ways to counteract and diminish his malignant influence not only in the overtly political realm but also in the social and cultural one. To fail in that would allow the death rattle of an old racist order to take hold as a deafening revival.

More:
Donald Trump's True Allegiances - The New Yorker

While Donald Trump's 17-day vacation is certainly his longest yet, it's only the latest of his many trips outside the White House. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

Secret Service agents walk the parade route as President Donald J. Trump's motorcade moves along.(Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)

WASHINGTON The Secret Service can no longer affordto payhundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective missionin large part due to thesheer size of President Trump's family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex'' Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandatedcaps for salary and overtime allowancesthat were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

"The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,'' Alles said. "I can't change that.I have no flexibility.''

Alles said the service is grappling withan unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42people have protection,a number that includes 18 members of his family. That's up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Overwork and constant travelhas also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provideadditional funding, Alles will not even be ablepay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump's first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.

"I don't see this changing in the near term,'' Alles said.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed deep concern for the continuing stress on an agency, first thrust into into turmoil five years ago with disclosures about sexual misconduct by agents in Colombia and subsequent White House security breaches.

A special investigative panel formed after a particularlyegregious 2014 White House breachalso found that that agents and uniform officers worked "an unsustainable number of hours,'' which also contributedto troubling attrition rates.

While about 800 agents and uniformed officers were hired during the past yearas part of an ongoing recruiting blitz to bolster the ranks, attrition limited the agency's net staffing gain to 300, according to agency records. And last year, Congress had to approve a one-time fix to ensure that 1,400 agents would be compensated for thousands of hours of overtime earned above compensation limits. Last year's compensation shortfall was first disclosed by USA TODAY.

"It is clear that the Secret Service's demands will continue to be higher than ever throughout the Trump administration,'' said Jennifer Werner, a spokesperson for Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Related:Hundreds of Secret Service agents maxed out on overtime

Secret Service tightens White House security on south side

Cummings, theranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who was the first lawmaker to sound the alarm after last year's disclosure that hundreds of agents had maxed out on pay,recently spoke with Alles and pledgedsupport for a more permanent fix, Werner said.

"We cannot expect the Secret Service to be able to recruit and keep the best of the best if they are not being paid for these increases (in overtime hours)."

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House oversight panel, is "working with other committees of jurisdiction to explore ways in which we can best support'' the Secret Service, his spokesperson Amanda Gonzalez said.

Talks also are underway in the Senate, where the Secret Service has briefed members of the Homeland Security Committee, which directly oversees the the agency's operations.

"Ensuring the men and women who put their lives on the line protecting the president, his family and others every day are getting paid fairly for their work is a priority,'' said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the panel's top Democrat. "I'm committed to working with my colleagues on both sides to get this done.''

Without some legislative relief, though, at least 1,100 agents for now would not be eligible for overtime even as one of the agency's largest protective assignments looms next month.Nearly150 foreign heads of state are expected to converge on New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.

Because of the sheer number of high-level dignitaries, the United Nations gathering is traditionally designated by the U.S., as a "National Special Security Event" and requires a massive deployment of security resources managed by the Secret Service.

That will be even trickier this year."Normally, we are not this tapped out,'' said Alles, whom Trump appointed to hispost in April.

The agents who have reached their compensation limits this year represent about a third of the Secret Service workforce, which waspressed last year to secure both national political conventions in the midst of a rollicking campaign cycle. The campaignfeatured regular clashes involving protesters at Trump rallies across the country, prompting the Secret Service at one pointto erect bike racks as buffers around stages to thwart potential rushes from people in the crowd.

Officials had hoped that the agency's workload would normalize after the inauguration, but the president's frequent weekend trips, his family's business travel and the higher number of protectees has made that impossible.

Secret Service agents rush Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump off the stage at a campaign rally in Reno, Nev., on Nov. 5, 2016. (Photo: John Locher, AP)

Since his inauguration, Trump has taken seven trips to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., traveled to his Bedminster, N.J., golf club five times and returned to Trump Tower in Manhattan once.

Trump's frequent visits to his "winter White House" and "summer White House" are especially challenging for the agency, which must maintain a regular security infrastructure at each while still allowing access topaying members and guests.

Always costly in manpower and equipment,the president's jaunts to Mar-a-Lago are estimated to cost at least $3 million each, based on a General Accounting Office estimate for similar travel by former President Obama. The Secret Service has spent some$60,000 on golf cart rentals alone this yearto protect Trump at both Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.

The president, First Lady Melania Trumpand the couple's youngest son Barron who maintained a separate detail in Trump Tower until June aren't the only ones on the move with full-time security details in tow.

Trump's other sons, Trump Organization executives Donald Jr. and Eric, based in New York, also arecovered by security details including when they travel frequentlyto promote Trump-branded properties in other countries.

A few examples:Earlier this year, Eric Trump's business travel to Uruguay cost the Secret Service nearly $100,000 just for hotel rooms.Other trips included the United Kingdom and the Dominican Republic.In February, both sons and their security details traveled to Vancouver for the opening of new Trump hotel there, and to Dubai to officially open a TrumpInternational Golf Club.

InMarch, security details accompanied part of the family, including Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner on a skiing vacation in Aspen, Colo. Even Tiffany Trump, the president's youngest daughter, took vacation to international locales such as Germany and Hungary with her boyfriend, which also require Secret Service protection.

While Alles has characterized the security challenges posed by the Trump administration as a new"reality" of the agency's mission, the former Marine Corps major general said he has discussed the agency's staffing limitations with the White House so that security operations are not compromised by a unusually busy travel schedule.

"They understand,'' Alles said. "They accommodate to the degree they can and to the degree that it can be controlled. They have been supportive the whole time.''

Over time, Alles expects the Secret Service's continued hiring campaign will gradually relieve the pressure. From its current force of 6,800 agents and uniform officers, the goal is to reach 7,600 by 2019 and 9,500 by 2025.

"We're making progress,'' he said.

For now, Alles is focused simply on ensuring that his current agents will be paid for thework they have already done.

"We have them working all night long; we're sending them on the road all of the time,'' Alles said. "There are no quick fixes, but over the long term, I've got to give them a better balance (of work and private life) here."

Related:

The six Trump properties President Trump has visited almost every weekend in six months

Secret Service spends $13,500 on golf cart rentals for President Trump's Bedminster trip

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2xinDsM

Read this article:
Exclusive: Secret Service out of money to pay agents because of Trump's frequent travel, large family - USA TODAY

Kurt Andersen

Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images

Kurt Andersens new book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, tackles many of the themes he has written about over the course of his career, including how our politics is influenced by broader trends in American culture and society. Andersen, who hosts a radio show about culture, Studio 360, which recently joined the Slate podcast fold, and co-founded Spy magazine (which was known for, among other things, going after Donald Trump), connects our insane current moment to the timeless idea of American exceptionalism, a creed that he believes always contained a certain naivet and gullibility. Whats worse, he argues, is that this idea became co-mingled with the individualism and selfishness of the 1960shelping to birth Donald Trump and much more. (A long much-debated excerpt from Andersens book appears as the current cover story in the Atlantic.)

Isaac Chotiner is a Slate staff writer.

I spoke by phone with Andersen recently. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed whether there is a connection between religious belief and conspiracy theories, whether America is crazier than anywhere else, and whether Donald Trump has changed over the past three decades.

Isaac Chotiner: Why has America gone insane?

Kurt Andersen: There are so many reasons. Some of the main strands I follow are extreme religiosity from the beginning, which has effloresced, especially in the last century and especially in the last few decades, into something extraordinary compared to anything else in the developed world.

Individualism is another way we went insane, when individualism got out of control, along with the 1960s, and along with the various forms of show business into which we can imagine ourselves and other beings.

Why do you think the 60s are partially to blame for where we are right now?

Only partially. This excerpt of the book that appeared in the Atlantic this month, thats what they were interested in.

Well the excerpts like 400,000 words.

No, its only 380,000 words. I guess what I believe happened, among all the great things that happened in the 60s, like civil rights and the beginning of womens equality and the fun and everything else, was this new relativism, thats the simplest word, that all forms of truth-finding are equally valid, whether scientific or magical. It became uncool and in some cases impermissible to say, No, thats fine if you want to believe that, but science is superior.

That, in the general sense, began as a thing on the left, to which conservatives at the time were up in arms. One of the things that happened, of course, is that 50 years on, that kind of relativism and that kind of do your own thing, believe your own thing, and have your own truth has consequentially empowered forces and individuals on the right.

OK but what is the causal connection there? Because if it was some sort of causal connection between the relativism in the 60s and the nightmare of our politics today, wouldnt you expect it to impact the left more?

You would if history and culture worked in obvious and predictable ways, but they dont. No, I dont believe that Donald Trump read Foucault and thought, My God, truth is all relative.

Among all the great things that happened in the 60s was this new relativism, thats the simplest word, that all forms of truth-finding are equally valid.

I think we agree on that, yeah.

I do believe that as academic relativism and indeed as countercultural relativism grew in the 60s, two separate but connected things, they so pervasively affected the way Americans think, that that was one thingnot the only thing, perhaps not even the main thingthat empowered and permitted the whatever we want place we are in today, and the, Oh no, I dont believe. I believe that theres some conspiracy of journalists and scientists pretending that climate change is the result of human activities, and/or I believe that some other conspiracy is responsible for the fact that autism is caused by vaccines. I dont want to follow into the Donald Trumpian both sides are at fault. While there are people on the left who fall prey to impossible and implausible and dubious conspiracy theories and science-denying and all the rest, it is highly asymmetrical.

You are talking about people who believe things without reason. Im trying to understand: Is there some data or something that youre looking at that makes you think this is where this trend started, that people became more unreasonable in the 60s?

There is data that Ive looked at extensively and report in the book extensively about the false things that people believe compared to earlier times. No, theres no data that supports my speculative cultural history, that part of how we got herepart, not allis this general abdication by gatekeepers and the establishment in the academy and elsewhere who used to say, No, this is much, much closer to the truth than this, rather than at the beginning to say, No, were not going to do that as much. Is there data or survey research to say that that was part of the cause? No, its my opinion.

In your book you quote a bunch of survey data thats alarming, like about people thinking Obama is the Antichrist, and you write, Why are we like this? The short answer is because were Americansbecause being American means we can believe anything we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone elses, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

The world is full of countries where there is strong religious belief and a strong belief in conspiracies. What is it specifically that you think is American about that rather than this is how human beings are, that we believe weird stuff?

The lines you just read, of course, are from the introductory chapter, so they are meant, just for the record, to be a high gloss that then I would spend 400 pages going into detail about.

I can read the whole book in this interview. We could do that.

Oh, stop. No, but in terms of just the religious stuff, theres this massive set of survey data about how much more religious we are, more prayerful we are, than other developed countries. Im not saying America is so different from Pakistan. Im saying America is different from Canada and Japan and Europe and Australia and the rest of the developed world, and we are, by every measure of religiosity. Again, its not just believe in God or not. Its the very detailed beliefs that we have as a people. That is just the clearest and starkest and most data-proven truth that we are different.

Tocqueville thought we were different than the French 170 years ago, but we have gotten more different. As I said, thats one of the things where its not at all anecdotal or purely anecdotal or speculative or anything else. Its just entirely true.

Is there data or survey research to say that that was part of the cause? No, its my opinion.

Dont the French believe in things like vaccine skepticism more than we do?

There is vaccine skepticism in Europe. Theres no question about that. No, that is not uniquely American. The degree to which American have stopped vaccinating their children was higher than anywhere else. We are the mother country of that. Its not unique to us.

I think of unfounded opinions as falling into two categories. One is religious belief or things like that, which I think are probably pretty deeply held and maybe even partially innate. Then you have a belief like you mentioned earlier, that global warming is fake, which really is not the type of belief that anyone could possibly gain unless they were following very specific news sources that were intent on lying to them. Do you think they are connected?

Yeah, I do, and I think they are synergistic. Climate change is one thing, which of course the Bible doesnt talk about, but on the other hand, there are things that are both. For instance evolution and creationism, and should evolution be taught without creationism in public schools. Thats where, of course, they overlap.

One thing Ill say about what I say about religion. Again, I am not a crusading Richard Dawkinsstyle atheist. I dont know. Maybe God exists. I dont know, so Im not saying, You people who believe in God, youre idiots. I am entirely open to the various shades and flavors and degrees of hunches and religious belief and all that. What I really focus on, and why I focus on it, and why I get down to the specifics of lets look at what most American Protestant Christians believe, is the extremism of these beliefs. Yeah, do you believe in God? Fine. Do you go to church? Great. Do you believe that Jesus was resurrected? OK, whatever. I dont know. I dont, but OK. When we got to faith healing and speaking in tongues and these specifics, which I grant its impolite of me to say, No, this is really nutty, Im sorry. Its important to me to not allow but its my faith to be the cloak that protects every belief that is a matter of faith from criticism, ridicule, doubt.

So yes, of course theyre different, but to me, theyre not entirely different.

Right, but some of the beliefs America has about religion or conspiracy theories are very similar in other parts of the world, whereas I think it would be very hard for any country in the world that did not have a very specific media environment like America has to not believe in global warming. The first thing feels more universal.

I think thats true. We can thank the Kochs, among others, for helping create that media environment. Indeed, I talk a lot about the media environment that has been built, the fantasyland infrastructure, that has built in the last 30 years, which has been crucial for sure. But I think in the simplest, most reductionist way, when you start with a people who are so much more prone to rationally insupportable religious beliefs, it seems natural to me that you will also have a country, partly as a result, in which people are willing to say, Yeah, I dont believe in climate change, either. Yes, of course, a media structure arose to teach them that, but a media structure could arise to teach them that in Denmark, and I dont think youd end up with half of the Danes believing that climate change doesnt exist.

Hopefully that wont happen and we will not be able to test that proposition.

Can you tell me about your personal experiences with our current president, if youve had any? And as someone whos been following him for decades, what do you make of the man you see today and whether theres anything surprising or different to you about where we are?

Ive never met him. I have received letters from him threatening legal action, and massive legal action, of course back when I was running Spy magazine. Other than that, my exchanges with him have just been him saying Im terrible in places like the New York Post. No, Ive never met him, but I have watched him. I did watch him closely and carefully in the late 80s, and early 90s, then stopped for 15 years until six years ago, mostly. People say, Hes always the same person. Hes a racist. As much as he was a jerk thenand occasionally, as in the ad he took out saying that the accused and later exonerated Central Park attackers, which indicates evidence of a racialist animosity or racismthe anger and racism and far-right stuff, there was very little evidence of that back in the day. He was a joke. I think what hes fallen into is because he doesnt believe much of anything; he has instincts, and I think weve seen in the last few days that he has actual instincts about white supremacy, frankly. I dont think he has well-formed beliefs, but he has instincts, guy-at-the-bar angry instincts. That is his thing. That is his fundamental thing.

What about just watching him as a person? The one thing, as someone whos watched a lot of old clips of him on Letterman and Howard Stern, is he seems to have less of a sense of irony now. He was always ridiculous, but he had some sense of himself as a character before, whereas now the mask has fallen or slipped, whatever the phrase is.

I think thats absolutely true. There are many changes. In addition to that fact that he no longer pretends to be in on the joke, and he was always pretending to be in on the joke, but he was more articulate. He seemed happier, frankly. He seemed happier. Look at him. You never see him laugh.

As Slates resident interrogator, Isaac Chotiner has tangled with Newt Gingrich and gotten personal with novelist Jonathan Franzen. Now hes bringing his pointed, incisive interview style to a weekly podcast in which he talks one-on-one with newsmakers, celebrities, and cultural icons.

It was very smart of you to publicize him in Spy magazine, therefore ensuring hell be president, therefore ensuring you can write a book about America going haywire.

Thank you. It was a very long-term plan, and they seldom work out as well as this one.

Well not for the country, but for you.

View original post here:
Are the '60s to Blame for Donald Trump? - Slate Magazine

Since the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. For some students and alumni ofthe evangelical Christian school inLynchburg, Va., Libertys perceived alignment with the president has been a source of shame and anger, a group of graduates wrotelast week.

Last week, manyreached their breaking point. After Trumps equivocation about neo-Nazi groups followingthe violence in Charlottesville, Falwell once again voiced his unwavering support for the president, tweeting that he was so proud of Trump forhis bold truthful statement on the tragedy.

President Trump on Aug. 15 said that "there's blame on both sides" for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

In response,Liberty Universitygraduates are calling on fellow alumni to take a stand against by returning their diplomas. They are also writing letters to Falwells office and to the Board of Trustees, calling for his removal.More than 260 people have joined a Facebook group titled Return your diploma to LU.

By publicly revoking all ties, all support present and future, the graduates hope to send a message to the school that could jeopardize future enrollment, finances and funding, according to the Facebook group. They are urging graduates to return their diplomas to Falwells office by Sept. 5.

In addition, several alumni have written letter to university officials calling on Falwell to disavow Trumps statements, NPR reported. In it, the graduates said Falwells characterization of Trumps remarks were incompatible with Liberty Universitys stated values, and incompatible with a Christian witness.

This sort of sends a wake-up call that you cant just align the entire university with Donald Trumps stance on a whim, Chris Gaumer, a former Student Government Association president and a 2006 graduate,told CNN.

[Liberty University students protest association with Trump]

Gaumer wrote on Facebook thatLiberty University graduates are ashamed, embarrassed, horrified. And sending back their diplomas is the least we like minded can do.

On Instagram, he also wrote, Many reasons to return LU degree, like a class called Creation Studies, but no reason more important than Falwell Jr. backing Trump backing white supremacists.

Responding to the students criticism on ABCs The Week Sunday, Falwell attempted to clarify his stance and said the students misunderstood him.

Falwell, who attended law school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said Trump left the door open for the incident to be considered domestic terrorism.

Hehas inside information that I dont have, Falwell said on The Week. I dont know if there were historical purists there who were trying to preserve some statues.

Falwell called the Charlottesville clashes pure evil versus good and said theres no good white supremacist.

I understand how some people could misunderstand his words, Falwell said of Trump. Yes, he could be more polished and politically correct but thats the reason I supported him, because hes not.

Most of Trumps evangelical advisers have refrained from criticizing him for his response to Charlottesville. But on Friday, New York City megachurch pastor A.R. Bernard announced that he had stepped down from the unofficial board of evangelical advisers to Trump, The Washington Posts Sarah Pulliam Bailey reported. Bernards Brooklyn-based Christian Cultural Center, which claims 37,000 in membership, has been described by the New York Times as the largest evangelical church in New York City.

Falwell, son of the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, has served as an essential evangelical voice in support of Trump. In some instances, his university community has followed suit. Students at the school voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November.Of the 3,205 votes cast on campus, Trump took 2,739, while Hillary Clinton received just 140.

As The Posts Joe Heim wrote:

Perhaps no Christian leader in the United States has more closely aligned himself with Trump than Falwell. The Liberty president delivered a glowing tribute to Trump during a campaign visit in January 2016. And his support was critical after the release in October of the Access Hollywood video in which Trump was overheard bragging lewdly about groping and trying to have sex with women. Falwell went to bat for Trump, saying that his comments were reprehensible but that were all sinners, every one of us. Weve all done things we wish we hadnt.

In May,Trump delivered the commencement address to Libertys Class of 2017.

President Trump delivered his first commencement address as president at Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Va. (The Washington Post)

Many of the students at Liberty, the nations largest Christian university, have been critical of Trump since before the election. In October, a statement issued by the group Liberty United Against Trump admonished Trump as well as Falwell for defending the then-candidate after he made the vulgar comments about women in the 2005 video. In the weeks that followed, more than 2,000 Liberty students and faculty signed the statement.

Falwell has shown himself to be unabashedly in service of money and power, at the expense of others, not of the message of the gospel he claims, Liberty graduates wrote in the Facebook group for the diploma return protest.He is unfit to lead any institution, but particularly one that professes a moral, ethical, or religious mission.

Many graduates on social media declared their intentions to join the protest and write their own letters to university officials.

Truth is, Ive been ashamed of the source of my diploma since long before Jerry Jr. started backing Trump, one alumna, Lauren Martin Day, wrote on Facebook.Grateful to know there are some other sensible alums decrying that deplorable institution.

She added that she took Liberty University off her resume over a decade ago and never looked back.

In a similar vein, 2002 graduate Rebekah Tilleytold NPR that she no longer wanted to be associated with her alma mater because the name can be so loaded.

Theres such a strong affiliation now between Liberty University and President Trump that you know that reflects badly on all alumni, Tilley said.

Not everyone supported the efforts to return diplomas. Some stood byFalwell, and others criticized the students as snowflakes.

Phil Wagner, who received both his bachelors and masters from Liberty University, told NPR that he disagrees with the presidents comments, he wont be sending back hisdegrees.I earned it, Wagner said. I worked hard for it. But he does plan to send a respectful letter to university officials, he added.

The affiliation between Trump and Falwellis even affecting some prospective students.

Chadwick Brawley, who identified himself as an African American Christian Worship Pastor, wrote that he had beenexcited about enrolling in the Doctor of Worship program at Liberty this month.

Postingon Libertys official Facebook page, Brawley wrote that Christian leaders had a valuable opportunity after the hatred, bigotry and violence in Charlottesville to take a stand.

You used your platform to escalate hate and further divide, Brawley wrote to Falwell. Supporting President Trumps lamentable response to the situation showed me who you are, what you support and how youre aligned politically and spiritually. Because of who I am, I find it extremely difficult to align myself with you and Liberty University. The search begins for other schools at which I may apply; schools that will appreciate my African-American heritage, perspective, gifts, genius and money.

More from Morning Mix

KKK leader threatens to burn Latina journalist, the first black person on his property

Jerry Lewis telethons raised billions for muscular dystrophy. Many cheered when he went off the air.

The rise and fall of Miamis CEO of Purple Drank

A woman in India just won a divorce because her husband failed to provide her a toilet. Thats huge.

Read the original:
Liberty University graduates return diplomas because of support for Trump by Jerry Falwell Jr. - Washington Post