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This years Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which took place the weekend before last, provided a window into how Donald Trump is handling the religious right, which has had setbacks during the Obama era, as LGBTQ rights surged. I chatted with quite a few social conservatives in the crowd, and last week I published my interviewwith Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council (FRC) who also served as the domestic policy chair of Donald Trumps transition team.

The Blackwell interview was quite illuminating. He was candid about how a religious freedom executive order, which would allow for discrimination against LGBT people and others, was still coming from the presidents desk, despite the Trump administration playing it down after a draft had leaked last month. Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State, is a devout warrior among evangelical crusaders. Hes passionate and forthright in his beliefs and enjoys discussing them.

I had interviewed Blackwell in 2008 at the GOP convention in a thirty-minute discussion in which he defended his claim that homosexuality is comparable to arson and kleptomania, because it is, in his view, a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed, though thats in complete opposition to the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and just about every other authority on the subject. Blackwell seemed to imply, against all scientific evidence, that anyone could succumb to this compulsion hence the religious right claim that homosexuality is a choice even including himself.

Ive never had to make the choice because Ive never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual, Blackwell had told me. But if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge.

People like Blackwell dont change their minds easily about these things. And here he is now, newly emboldened, having served on Trumps transition team and readying for the anticipated religious freedom order, working for a group, the Family Research Council (FRC), that is to the Trump administration what Jerry Falwells Moral Majority was to the Reagan administration in the 80s.

Tony Perkins, president of FRC, has steadfastly supported Trump and had driven evangelicals to turn out to vote for him by a large percentage, just as Falwell did for Ronald Reaganin 1980 and 1984. While both Reagan and Trump were divorced celebrities who came out of decadent Hollywood and New York respectively before entering politics, theyve each been viewed as speaking the language of evangelical Christians, presenting themselves as unlikely but committed fighters for social conservatives.

The president said when he was a candidate that there is a war on Christianity in America, the former head of FRCs Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, told me at CPAC, regarding Trump. And as someone who is a religious liberty lawyer who frequently represents the evangelical and Catholic communities in this country, thats exactly the sort of language that most people in that situation use. There has been unprecedented hostility against people of devout faiths in recent years. So the problem is there. Its been clearly defined. The president is aware of it.

During the 1980 election campaign, meeting with evangelical church leaders in Dallas, Reagan cemented his relationship with evangelical voters, famously saying, I know you cant endorse me, But . . . I want you to know that I endorse you.

Its a strikingly similar statement to many of Trumps promises to evangelical leaders: Short on details, big on commitment and promise. At the time of Reagans election, evangelicals believed they were were in the wilderness and saw a country in moral decay in which tradition was uprooted, coming off of the 60s and 70s civil rights and liberation movements for women, people of color and gays.

Many evangelical leaders had believed they were betrayed by President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical himself. He was pilloried by social conservatives for supporting abortion rights and not referencing God in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980 (in contrast to Reagan who did so at the Republican National Convention). In that context, the fact that someone like Reagan was even speaking up for evangelicals and promising to push their agenda including against abortion was enough to galvanize them.

Evangelicals have similarly expressed being in the wilderness during the Obama era, a period in which they experienced major defeats as LGBT rights surged forward with Obamas repeal of dont ask, dont tell and at the Supreme Court with marriage equality. Like Reagan, Trump not only held himself out as someone whod fight to take them back to a long lost era Make America great again! but also presented himself as a leader taking on enemies of religious freedom around the world. For Reagan, it was the evil empire of the Soviet Union, presented as an existential threat (ironic, given Trumps current view of Russia), and for Trump it is Muslims, whom he portrays as a evil religious and existential threat. Both men augmented their fight for evangelicals against immorality within the country with battles against those outside the country who are perceived as threatening to religious liberty.

So, with Trump using the Reagan playbook, here is how things will go down. He will string them along with a lot of flowery statements, including biblical references, and make grand promises, such as allowing them to have a tax exemption while engaging in political activity repealing the Johnson Amendment in the U.S. tax code which will likely never happen. Hell hope that nominating a judicial originalist like Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court will satisfy them. And hell give them morsels here and there, meant to placate them, but they cant be too radical since that could cause too much outrage in the larger electorate.

Perhaps most consequentially, Trump wont speak up or devote resources to issues or crises that arise affecting LGBTQ people as the AIDS epidemic did in a catastrophic way in the 80s, ignored by Reagan until it was out of control. Silence and ignorance allowing people to literally be harmed, suffer or die can go a long way at satisfying those who hate us. Weve already seen this with the Trump administrations decision not to continue defending a court challenge by several states against Obama administration guidelines to protect transgender students and then rescinding the guidelines entirely.

But, while at first being thankful that Trump is even paying attention to them, evangelical leaders will soon become vocal and demanding, as they did with Reagan. (This is already starting to happen).

The big difference thirty years later, however, is the organization and energy of the those of us who fight for equality. And that brings me back to CPAC. Blackwell spoke about the religious freedom order which would allow for discrimination against LGBTQ people as being redrafted to stand up to judicial scrutiny. But its also likely being re-written to withstand public scrutiny too. Last months leaked draft of the order and we should be thankful for whistleblowers who are revealing some of the horrific plans the Trump administration has under wraps caused an uproar in the media and among the public that forced the Trump administration into retreat, even if temporarily.

After the Muslim ban fiasco, the Trump team surely didnt want another disaster, even as religious groups continue to pressure Trump for the executive order. Both situations showed how public outcry and the courts could help keep the administration in check, even as its made a second attempt on the Muslim ban (if a weakened version). LGBT rights have come into the mainstream, unlike in the 80s when queers were almost universally feared and shunned.

Religious conservatives will become louder, but theres only so far that that Reagan playbook can take Trump today. He can be pushed back, and stopped, if we stand firm and organize. Thats especially true if LGBTQ activists dont begin to compromise on rights a strategy some LGBT activists have actually suggested which would be an enormous trap.

See the original post:
Donald Trump And The Reagan Playbook On LGBTQ Rights - Huffington Post

The Trump-normalizing going on now has long since passed the rationalizing that were happening mid-campaign.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY TY WRIGHT / GETTY

Thats crazy! That is the instant, intuitive, and, one might think, only possible response of a sane person to a weeks worth of tweets from President Donald Trump. Only crazy people make reckless charges, without any plausible foundation, and then simply shrug and sit on them. Take one recent example: How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! This charge is mindboggling, not least for being self-exploding. For Obama to have wiretapped Trump (put aside that thats not, technically speaking, what is done any longer; the President may have been moved by vague memories of how the feds brought down John Gotti), Obama would have needed his own private team of plumbers to break into, or hack the systems of, Trump Tower. And no one in his right mind suggests that Obama ever had such a team. The most obvious alternative would be that it was done by the F.B.I., in response to a court order spurred by genuine suspicion of grave wrongdoing. In that scenario, Trump would be asserting that someone in the Department of Justice had grounds for such suspicion, sufficient to convince a judge. But he couldnt possibly have intended to say that. All this suggests that he may not be capable of the normal logic of normal people, of any kind of political bent. And that, folks, would be crazy.

Of course, we are quickly counselled never to say this, in part because calling Trump crazy would be, in plain English, an insult to crazy people. Diagnosis should be left to those with expertise in it; mental illness is not a category to be used casually to describe those whose behavior we find squalid or even abhorrent. And calling people crazy, to take it to the next dimension, is what totalitarian societies do when they want to lock dissidents away.

Understood. But it is still important, for the sake of sanity, to assert that there is a meaningful sense of the word crazy that doesnt demand medical diagnosis. It arises, instead, from an intelligent description of the normal workings of human minds and human relationships. And its important to preserve that sense for common usage, because we often need to distinguish between normal people we disagree with or even think may be actively doing wrongsay, taking health insurance away from millions of people in blind pursuit of an ideological passionand people who are dangerous because they have passed beyond the ability to actively reason with evidence about the world.

When Patsy Cline sings about being crazy for loving you, it doesnt mean that shes clinically diagnosable, and we would be as blind as, well, the guy in the song is to warn others from calling her so. It means that her love has robbed her (or himWillie Nelson wrote the song) of all rationality. Its crazy to be in love with the object of the song because he (or she) isnt capable of reciprocating that love.It is less than a diagnosis, but is more than a metaphor. When it happens in real life, we sound more impatient, but we use the same language: Youre crazy to go on texting that guy/girl after everything he/she has put you through. (And then they always do. And then we sigh.)

Crazy lovers are pitiful, or pathetic, or, often enough, poignant figures. Crazy politicians are not. The Trump-normalizing going on now has long since passed the practice we might call rationalizing up to the closest reasonable position, which was happening mid-campaign. That was when his talk of a border wall paid for by Mexico was imagined as, really, a mere reinforced fence, while a Muslim ban became a more watchful eye on refugees, just as sexual predation became locker-room talk. The normalizing that goes on now is the normalizing that one sees in old tales of crazy monarchs making pronouncements that everyone, including those closest to the ruler, knows are pure fantasy, unhinged from realitythree million illegal voters and the evil conspiracy of Barack Obamabut are talked around or through or about or down or all around until the mad king is placated, for a moment.

One theory, of course, has it that this is a strategic form of crazy, a way of distracting the public from Trumps circles Russian connections or the disastrous dismantling of Obamacare. But something similar happens with all the patent untruths Trump tells. Just as the media have a hard time calling crazy things crazy, we are also now reluctant to call lies, lies, even when it doesnt seem that theres anything else youcancall them. Again, the rationale is not ridiculous: a lie is more grave than an untruth, which can be merely a mistaken conviction, and it implies conscious intention to deceive rather than inward-turning self-deception. But, really, the word lie isnt an accusation when it comes to things like the Obama wiretapping; its a description. The alternative, of course, is to believe that extravagantly obvious untruths are sincerely held, in which case they could only be called crazy.

The great enablers in this business are not so much members of the media, who struggle every day between familiar practices and wild times, but the Republican representatives and senators who, by shrugging off the loony on a daily basis, do more than anyone else to make it normal. And here, perhaps, lies a link too easily overlooked. Its not just a tribal reflex on the part of the Republicans to defend a President of the same party; its a necessity of the numbers. (There were three million more votes for the Democratic candidate for President and approximately six million more votes for Democrats in Senate racesyes, it was designed to be unjust, but that does not make it less unjustand this was, of course, the second time in five elections that the Presidential candidate who won the most votes was denied the office, a previously unprecedented thing.) As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening recent pamphlet On Tyranny, a minorityparty now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people. Snyder writes, The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular and several that are genuinely unpopularand thus must either fear democracy or weaken it. This is a toxic combination: a screw-loose leader ready to say anything, an unpopular party that wants to keep him from being exposed for what he iseven as the door swings wildly on whatevers left of its hingesfor fear of having its policies exposed for what they are. Its, well, crazy. And where we are.

See the article here:
The Words We Use About Donald Trump - The New Yorker

CNNs Jake Tapper opined on severaltopics during an interview on Day 1 of SXSW in Austin, but he let loose when talk inevitably turned to President Donald Trump and his nascent administration.

Its a difficult environment when the commander in chief of the country Id say, Leader of the Free World, but I think thats Angela Merkel now hears anything he doesnt like and calls it, fake news, said Tapper in during the onstage discussion moderated by MTV News/Wonkettes Ana Marie Cox. I call fake news three recent things: When Trump said nobody in his campaign spoke to Russia, and they did; when Michael Flynn said he didnt have contact with the Russians, and he did; and now our Attorney General said he didnt speak to the Russians. The White House wants to delegitimize any checks and balances.

Tapper, whos been a favorite piata of the alt-right in recent weeks, compared Trumps statements on fake news to that of his own 7-year-old son. He said the boy will notice when hes not in a good mood and will react by using an exaggerated hand gesture and screaming, Fake news! Said Tapper with an underlying condemnation of the presidents maturity level, Except, my 7-year-old knows its a ridiculous, childish thing.

Tapper also took issue with the administrations jobs report today. Trump had dismissed mostly good economic news during the campaign as lies but embraced todays report that more than 250K jobs were created in February, quoting with laughter Sean Spicers response to a question about whether the president accepts the official statistics today: They may have been phony in the past, but they arent now.

Tapper said that, after moderating a debate with GOP hopefuls, he knew who would win. He said Trumps opponents were soft on him when he asked a pointed question and that spelled out who would ultimately triumph to lead the partys ticket in the general election.

SXSW

When asked in the debates if the other Republicans had concern if Trump had the nuclear codes, Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush [demurred]. I knew then hed be the nominee. They couldnt deal with an Alpha.

Beyond many instances citing what he sees as Trump and his administrations personal toying of truth, Tapper gave kudos to some members of the press for holding POTUS to account. But also said there are other journalists who are acquiescing by not holding Trump accountable for his statements.

What bothers me are journalists who are not rising to the occasion, Tapper said. I wont mention names, but there are some who are keeping their heads down and are [essentially] saying its OK make fun of the disabled [for instance]. These are things I never thought Id have to say.

Tapper added that he has never seen it more tense in Washington than now, but the one thing that unites Republicans on the Hill are Trumps attacks on the press. The press is in a much more adversarial place than ever, the CNN anchor said. And you know what? I hope we stay that way now and in the next administration because thats where we are supposed to be.

As for that previous administration, Tapper seemed to surprise some in the crowded Ballroom D at the Austin Convention Center when he said that he thought the former POTUS had little fondness for him, saying he had been a challenge for them as well.

I dont think President Obama likes me, Tapper said. I think he thinks I am a pain in the ass.

While Trump rails against Alec Baldwins portrayal of himon SaturdayNight Live, Tapper is mostly pleased with how he comes off in BeckBennetts portrayal of him on the show. I feel very, very lucky, he said. The way they have gone after Spicer I have a handsome guy I feel like I dodged a bullet. Though that last skit I dont know about that

Hes talking about last Saturdays skit in which Kate McKinnons Kellyanne Conway stalks Bennetts Tapper. Watch it below.

Read more here:
CNN's Jake Tapper Unloads On Donald Trump, The Media & Fake News At SXSW - Deadline

WASHINGTON When President Donald Trump or a member of his staff deletes a tweet, they may be violating federal law, two top congressmen warned the White House this week.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to White House counsel Don McGahnon Wednesday expressing concerns about the Trump administrations record keeping habits and its nontransparent use of social media and other forms of electronic communication.

One example the lawmakers cited is Trumps habit of misspelling and then deleting tweets, which they warned could pose a violation to the Presidential Records Act if the deleted tweets are not archived.

Many of the messages sent from these accounts are likely to be presidential records and therefore must be preserved, they wrote, referring to both Trumps personal @realDonaldTrump account and his official @POTUS account. It has been reported, however, that President Trump has deleted tweets, and if those tweets were not archived, it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act, Chaffetz and Cummings wrote in the letter.

Trump sometimesdeletes tweets due to spelling errors.Over the weekend, he deleted two tweetsthat misspelled the word hereby.

Under former President Barack Obama, White House digital staffers instituted a system of auto-archiving tweets from the president and other top officials.

We eventually set up auto-archiving for official platforms, so errors could be corrected while preserving the original, Ezra Mechaber, a former deputy director in the White Houses office of digital strategy, tweeted in January.

In their letter, Chaffetz and Cummings also asked the White House to investigate whether federal officials are using personal email accounts for government business. Under the Presidential Records Act, White House officials must forward emails sent from those accounts to their government account within 20 days. The same is true of employees at federal agencies, under the Federal Records Act.

Official business must be conducted in such a way as to preserve the official record of actions taken by the federal government and its employees, they wrote.

They also raised ethical concerns about the use of apps like Signal and Confide, which encrypt messages and, in some cases, delete them once theyre received.

The need for data security, however, does not justify circumventing requirements established by federal recordkeeping and transparency laws, the lawmakers wrote.

Chaffetz and Cummings suggested that they may consider updating the laws to reflecttrends in federal employees use of technology.

In the meantime, they asked the White House to conduct trainings on proper record keeping and archiving of social media, email and other electronic messaging systems, and urged the administration to clarify its policies and procedures on such matters.

The White House did not respond to a request for a comment.

Read Chaffetz and Cummings full letter below.

Read the original here:
Congress Warns Donald Trump: Stop Deleting Your Tweets - Huffington Post

BBC News

Meet the Donald Trump of Indonesia BBC News And in 2015 he signed a $1bn (820m) deal with Donald Trump to build and develop a Trump Hotel and Tower in West Java, as well as the six-star luxury resort in Bali. Mr Tanoesodibjo will pay for the construction and give the Trump Organisation an ... and more »

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Meet the Donald Trump of Indonesia - BBC News