Im-Politic: A Neglected Russia Disinformation Objective?

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2016 election, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, China, CIA, CNN, collusion, cybersecurity, Director of National Intelligence, disinformation, fake news, Im-Politic, intelligence community, James R. Clapper, John O. Brennan, Matthew Rosenberg, MSNBC, NBC, North Korea, Putin, Russia, The New York Times, Trump

Well then. Two passages in a New York Times article from this morning’s print edition were sure conversation-stoppers when it comes to the ongoing uproar about charges that President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to boost his election odds and ensure soft treatment from his administration. That is, if you read far enough into the long piece to encounter them. In fact, they’re so important that they should have been the main angle – or at the very least, the main theme of front-page stories from now until we ever find out what’s really happened.

The passages (which make the same critical point):

First, according to Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, by some point last September (at the latest), American intelligence officials were worried that Russia had developed an “operation to create discord inside the American government.”

Second, and more specifically, the intelligence agencies viewed one key part of this operation as feeding information suggesting that Vladimir Putin’s regime could blackmail the President (and/or the candidate) to “United States intelligence agencies and pit them against Mr. Trump.”

And here, in Rosenberg’s words, is the context:

“American intelligence agencies believe that Russia’s spy services see the deep political divisions in the United States as a fresh opportunity to inflame partisan tensions. Russian hackers are targeting American voting databases ahead of the midterm election this year, they said, and using bot armies to promote partisan causes on social media. The Russians are also particularly eager to cast doubt on the federal and congressional investigations into the Russian meddling, American intelligence officials said.

“Part of that effort, the officials said, appears to be trying to spread information that hews closely to unsubstantiated reports about Mr. Trump’s dealings in Russia, including [a] purported video [depicting him in compromising sexual situations], whose existence Mr. Trump has repeatedly dismissed.”

In plainer English, if Rosenberg has it right, the Russians have not only been trying to put Mr. Trump over a barrel and make sure that he defeated his main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. They have not only been trying to shake Americans’ confidence in their democratic institutions by hacking into them and unleashing a flood of fake news onto its media platforms, social and conventional. They have not only been trying to cover their tracks by using such fake news and other tactics to discredit the Congressional investigations into election meddling and related reported outrages.

They have also – separately – been trying to whip up antagonism between the President and the intelligence community. Achieving this goal of course would both tend to hamper America’s own intelligence operations and broader foreign and national security policies, as well as undermine the nation’s political system and its underlying social and cultural unity. And the tumult engulfing the capital and the nation as a whole suggests that the Russians are succeeding with this disinformation campaign, and that the intelligence agencies are playing their hoped for role.

Not that this possibility lets Mr. Trump and his aides totally, or mainly, or partly off the hook when it comes to their Russia ties either before or after his election.  For this objective could well have been sought on top of an effort to turn Mr. Trump into a Manchurian Candidate and President, not instead of it. But it does raise the question of how many of the allegations have stemmed from simple, and completely fictitious, plants.

Something else noteworthy about this article: If it’s accurate, then the potentially disastrous loss of America’s cyber-weapons to Russia and perhaps other adversaries that keyed Rosenberg’s piece was just the latest disclosed possibly catastrophic intelligence failures that occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, and on the watches of the former intelligence agency chiefs, like his Director of National Intelligence (the complex’s top job) James R. Clapper, and one of his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John O. Brennan – both of whom have been particularly sharp Trump critics.

Two others? China’s penetration of the CIA’s operations in the People’s Republic, which reportedly resulted in the assassination or capture of “more than a dozen sources” (according to press accounts, the breach began in 2010, under Brennan’s predecessor, former General David Petraeus) and the failure to anticipate the speed of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development (which can be laid directly at Clapper’s feet, and which Brennan apparently missed as well).

Clapper, incidentally, is now a “national security analyst” for CNN. Brennan has just joined NBC and MSNBC in the same capacity. Good luck to you if you think there’s any chance these networks’ weekend talk shows tomorrow will raise any of this, including the Rosenberg article, with them?

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So You Think Trump is a Dangerous Nut on North Korea?

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Alex Ward, alliances, allies, Ana Fifield, Ankit Panda, Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Cold War, Council on Foreign Relations, David J. Rothkopf, David Jackson, deterrence, Diane Feinstein, Ed Markey, foreign policy, foreign policy establishment, Kim Jong Un, media, Nicole Gaouette, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Peter Baker, political class, Rick Gladstone, Stewart Patrick, The Atlantic, The Diplomat, The New York Times, Trump, United Nations, USAToday, Vox.com, Washington Post

Weird as it sounds, the North Korea nuclear crisis has created two significant benefits – though unfortunately neither has yet created either establishment or popular pressure to change an increasingly reckless American approach.

Still, it’s promising that dictator Kim Jong Un’s rapid development of nuclear weapons that can reach the U.S. homeland is not only revealing that America’s longstanding approach to defense alliances is now exposing the nation to the risk of nuclear attack even when its own security is not directly at stake. It’s also more recently begun exposing America’s many foreign policy and other elite mainstays either as ignoramuses or (much more likely) shameful hypocrites.

The reason? They profess to be shocked, just shocked (Google “Casablanca” and “Louis Renault”) that President Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea in order “to defend itself or its allies.” As if they’ve never heard of “nuclear deterrence.” And don’t know that such saber-rattling has been U.S. policy for decades.

To review briefly, since fairly early in the Cold War, and especially since the former Soviet Union developed its own impressive nuclear forces, American leaders have overwhelmingly concluded that the only reasonable uses of these weapons was preventing a nuclear attack on the United States itself, or a similar strike or conventional military assault on one of the countries it was treaty-bound to protect. The idea was that even nuclear-armed potential aggressors the Soviets and Chinese (and the North Koreans, once they crossed the threshhold) would think at least twice before moving on targets if they had reason to fear that the United States would launch its own nukes against those countries.

From time to time, some politicians and analysts suggested that the effects of such nuclear weapons use could be restricted to efforts to take out the enemy’s remaining nuclear weapons or otherwise fall short of “totally destroying” that adversary. But for the most part, the idea of limited nuclear war has been rejected in favor of vowing annihilation. And except for disarmament types on the Left and super-hawks on the Right (who supported the aforementioned “counterforce” approach), the political class comprised of office-holders and journalists and think tankers was just fine with the nuclear element of U.S. alliance strategy.

It’s completely bizarre, therefore, that almost none of the press coverage – including “experts'” analyses – of Mr. Trump’s September 19 statement evinces any awareness of any of this history. Instead, it’s portrayed the “totally destroy” threat as appallingly monstrous, unhinged rhetoric from an unprecedentedly erratic chief executive. Just as bad, President Trump is accused of playing right into Kim’s hands and shoring up his support with the North Korean populace.

For instance, here’s how Washington Post reporter Ana Fifield yesterday described the consensus of of North Korea specialists she had just surveyed:

“Kim Jong Un’s regime tells the North Korean people every day that the United States wants to destroy them and their country. Now, they will hear it from another source: the president of the United States himself.

“In his maiden address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.” Analysts noted that he did not even differentiate between the Kim regime, as President George W. Bush did with his infamous “axis of evil” speech, and the 25 million people of North Korea.”

Here’s the New York Times‘ take, from chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and foreign policy reporter Rick Gladstone:

“President Trump brought the same confrontational style of leadership he has used at home to the world’s most prominent stage on Tuesday as he vowed to ‘totally destroy North Korea‘ if it threatened the United States….”

Similarly, USAToday‘s David Jackson described the Trump speech as “a stark address to the United Nations that raised the specter of nuclear warfare” and contended that “Trump’s choice of words on North Korea is in keeping with the bellicose rhetoric he’s already used to describe the tensions that have escalated throughout his eight months in office.”

As for the Associated Press, the world’s most important news wire service, it was content to offer readers a stunning dose of moral equivalence: “In a region well used to Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter-threats, Mr. Trump’s comments stood out.“

CNN‘s approach? It quoted a “senior UN diplomat” as claiming that “it was the first time in his memory that a world leader has called for the obliteration of another state at the UNGA [United Nations General Assembly], noting even Iran’s most fiery leaders didn’t similarly threaten Israel.”

For good measure, reporter Nicole Gaouette added, “The threat is likely to ratchet up tensions with North Korea while doing little to reassure US allies in Asia, said analysts who added that the President now also runs the risk of appearing weak if he doesn’t follow through.”

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick, who served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under former President George W. Bush, told the BBC that the Trump threat is implausible, and that “I think the folks in the Pentagon when they look at military options are just aghast at the potential loss of life that could occur with at a minimum hundreds of thousands of South Koreans killed in Seoul.”

For David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and protege of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who went on to edit FOREIGNPOLICY magazine (where I worked many years before), the problem is much simpler: “The president of the United States chose, in a forum dedicated to diplomacy, to threaten to wipe another nation — a much smaller one — off the face of the earth in language that was not so much hard-line rhetoric as it was schoolboy bullying complete with childish name-calling.”

Many members of the U.S. Congress were no better. Said California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein: “Trump’s bombastic threat to destroy North Korea and his refusal to present any positive pathways forward on the many global challenges we face are severe disappointments. He aims to unify the world through tactics of intimidation, but in reality he only further isolates the United States.”

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey brought up a war powers angle: “The more the president talks about the total destruction of North Korea, the more it’s necessary for the country and the Congress to have a debate over what the authority of a president is to launch nuclear weapons against another country.”

What’s of course especially ironic about Markey’s words is that such a U.S. policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons would effectively destroy the American alliances that liberals like Markey have become enamored with lately, and that President Trump is often charged by these same liberals as attempting to dismantle.

Some other news organizations and websites have behaved even more strangely – lambasting the Trump threat but then acknowledging deep inside their accounts that the President said nothing fundamentally new.

For example, the viscerally anti-Trump Vox.com website predictably led off one of its accounts with, “On September 19, President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. His harsh rhetoric toward North Korea stood out — mostly because he threatened to obliterate the country of 25.4 million people.”

Six paragraphs later, writer Alex Ward got around to mentioning that “A few [specialists] noted that it was similar to what other presidents, including President Obama, have said before.”

And in an Atlantic post titled, “A Presidential Misunderstanding of Deterrence,” author Ankit Panda of The Diplomat newspaper accused President Trump of using “apocalyptic rhetoric” and threatening “to commit a horrific act expressly forbidden by international humanitarian law….”

But then he immediately turned around and admitted,

“The remarks echoed similar, countless deterrent threats levied against North Korea by past U.S. presidents with more subtlety and innuendo, perhaps allowing for a more calibrated and flexible response. But ultimately vowing to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea if America or its allies come under attack is, in fact, not all that sharp a break from existing U.S. policy.”

If these treatments of the North Korea crisis were simply efforts to demonize President Trump by abusing history, that would be contemptible enough, but what else is new from America’s too often incompetent and scapegoat-addicted elites?

But something much more dangerous is at work here. Individuals who, for good reasons, have not been regarded as kooks are using Never Trump-ism to foster a genuinely kooky idea. They’re suggesting that the alliances so central to America’s foreign policy making for decades should be viewed as little more than kumbaya symbols, and that anyone speaking frankly about their possibly deadly and indeed horrific implications is beyond the pale – even though the proliferation of nuclear weapons has unmistakably rendered these arrangements far more perilous.

In other words, they’re spreading the worst, and most childish, of all canards about foreign policy, or about any dimension of public policy – not that a particular set of choices is sound or not (that’s almost always legitimately debatable), but that hard choices never need to be made at all.

Im-Politic: Fakeonomics on Illegal Immigration From CNN

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California, CNN, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Octavio Blanco, Sanctuary State, taxes, welfare

When I was learning the journalistic ropes, one of the first lessons taught was never to present a piece of information totally devoid of context. So, for example, if you were writing about how much a national economy grew during a given time period, you’d also include something about how that growth compared with that country’s past performance, or with the performance of other countries. How else could the reader take anything useful away from such a report?

Apparently, however, CNN doesn’t always follow this practice. Or maybe more accurately, it doesn’t follow this practice when it covers immigration issues, and especially when even minimal context would cast doubt on widespread claims that America’s illegal immigrants are so valuable that Trump-like restrictionist policies are tantamount to economic suicide. How else could one interpret the May 18 post by Octavio Blanco on new legislation aimed at establishing California as a sanctuary state?

Blanco, for example, properly reported the claim of the bill’s sponsor that the illegal workforce “contributes some $180 billion to the state’s GDP.” I’d have liked some verification of this figure, or even a source, but at least Blanco associated the contention with a figure who’s clearly taken one side of the issue.

Other omissions are less justifiable. Is this a net figure? That is, does it include any costs resulting from the state’s illegal workforce, or families of these workers? The author doesn’t say. And what about some perspective about that $180 billion figure? Obviously the legislator who fed it to Blanco hoped to convey the impression that it’s a staggering sum. Yet it begs the question of how big that state GDP actually is. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, last year, it was a little over $2.6 trillion (unadjusted for inflation – and that took me four seconds to look up.) So if the $180 billion is unadjusted for inflation as well (something else the author doesn’t tell us), the illegal immigrant share is about 8.2 percent.

That still sounds like a lot. Except as the author also notes, another source pegs illegals as nearly 10 percent of the California workforce. So even if the $180 billion figure is accurate, that would mean that the state’s illegal workers are punching below their weight in terms of productivity.

That, however, wouldn’t be the last word, either. The $180 billion figure would be more impressive if it was a growing share of state output, and less impressive if it was shrinking or stagnant. But Blanco’s article gives readers no way to know.

Another statistic cited by Blanco sheds a little light on these questions, but not nearly enough, because it suffers the same shortcomings. The author reports that a “Washington, D.C.-based research group,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), has determined that “In 2014, almost $3.2 billion of California’s state and local taxes came from undocumented immigrants….”

Again, that “billion” word sounds like a major sum – but sharp-eyed readers might notice something that’s apparently eluded Blanco. If both ITEP and the lawmaker who introduced the Sanctuary State bill are right, then the tax revenue generated by California’s illegal workers amounts to about 1.78 percent of their contribution to the state economy. That looks distinctly unimpressive.

Just as unimpressive: the share of the state’s total annual tax haul represented by illegal immigrants, if ITEP is right. For according to the state government, the $3.2 billion claimed by ITEP for 2014 would come to 4.83 percent of personal income tax revenue. Remember – this is from nearly 10 percent of the state’s workforce, so that’s disproportionately low.

A least as important, when talking about illegal immigrants – the $3.2 billion figure is clearly not a net figure, in terms of the impact of this population on the state’s resources. Specifically, it omits illegal the use of state services by illegal immigrants and any family members who are legal (e.g., anchor children). This issue will keep looming larger and larger as the state pushes to extend eligibility for welfare and other state resources to illegals – which has already happened with in-state tuition to and financial aid for California public universities.

It’s true that income tax revenue isn’t the sum total of state tax revenue. The state government says the share was 65 percent in 2014. The remainder comes from corporate income taxes, sales taxes, and an “other” category. Illegal workers (and their families) are probably paying some of those types of taxes, too, but the article doesn’t provide any information on that score, either.

Give Blanco some credit: He reports that “not everyone agrees on the sanctuary state bill.” If only his article focusing on the legislation’s economic impact gave readers any sense that not every fact portrays it as an economic winner, either.

Im-Politic: Mainstream Media’s Pro-Open Borders Bias Remains Widespread

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assimilation, civil religion, CNN, Donie O'Sullivan, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Irish-Americans, Mainstream Media, national identity, National Public Radio, Open Borders, Samuel P. Huningtom, Seymour Martin Lipset, The Washington Post, Tom Gjelten

The pro-Open Borders slant of the Mainstream Media has become so pervasive that the last few days alone have served up no less than two major instances by leading news organizations. One should be painfully obvious – at least to anyone familiar with the history of immigration in the United States and the nation’s (until unquestionably successful) approach towards assimilating newcomers. The other is more difficult to detect. Both also entail telling failures of professional judgment by writers and editors alike. You decide which (if either) is the most worrisome.

The obvious example of bias came from a Washington Post piece Sunday by National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten. If you ignore the lessons Gjelten claims flow from that American immigration history, you can learn a lot from his article about (or be usefully reminded of) the various efforts made from the early 19^th to the mid-20^th century to address the various social and cultural issues large inflows from regions outside Britain (though still mainly from Europe) in particular posed. Of course, far too many were products of simple bigotry.

But Gjelten then ventures deeply into a dangerous fantasyland when he discusses those lessons and what they mean today. He all but explicitly states that, given the more recent waves of immigrants, now dominated by non-Europeans, Americans should not only reject race and ethnicity or religion the bases of their national identity. They should also reject using what’s long been called a “civil” or “political” religion – a group of political beliefs and values that can surely be argued over around the edges, but that surely closely approximates a formula developed by political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset. As Gjelten summarizes it: “liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and a laissez-faire approach to governance and daily life.”

Since I’d add separation of church and state, another common definition of Americanism – advanced by another political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington – is more problematic. “Anglo-Protestant culture and political values.” But if you think about it, it’s not that much more problematic, especially since the overlap between Lipset and Huntington is so substantial.

Moreover, look at the matter from the opposite perspective. How many other peoples and contemporary regions have created political values in particular (“cultural values” is a concept that’s much too sweeping and much too prone to intolerant abuse for me) that most Americans today would want to live under? Latin America? East Asia? The Middle East? Please. So if you employ a little common sense, and substitute something like “European Enlightenment” for “Anglo-Protestant,” you arrive at a basis for American identity that not only should offend no one, but that, more important, has underlain much of the nation’s extraordinary success.

But Gjelten seems not to agree. In response to Huntington’s (poorly formulated) contention that successful assimilation has entailed “people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants [becoming] Americans by adopting America’s Anglo-Protestant culture and political values,” he maintains:

“Whether that had really happened or was even possible was debatable. ‘A nation of more than 130 cultural groups cannot hope to have all of them Anglo-Saxonized,’ argued Molefi Kete Asante in his book ‘The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.’ Trying to do so, he argued, would only alienate minorities and deepen disunity.”

Yet having apparently dismissed civil religion as well as (rightly) race and ethnicity as the source of America’s national identity, does Gjelten come up with any viable alternatives? None that I can see. In fact, at this point, his article dissolves into an endorsement of concepts like “nondiscrimination,” “diversity,” and “multiculturalism” that are not only gauzy but lacking in any particular content.

The author maintains that what he terms “nondiscriminatory immigration” based on these empty principles has succeeded in America by making it “more resilient.” But his evidence can’t possibly impress: that “In comparison with Western European countries that have also received large numbers of immigrants, America has proved to be more capable of absorbing and successfully integrating a diverse population.” Of course, this observation practically defines “low bar.”

It’s Gjelten’s right to believe in a definition of national identity evidently distinguished only by what it isn’t – though he sure didn’t provide any examples of countries that have been held together adequately simply by ideals such as multiculturalism and diversity. It’s also his right to believe – as actually seems to be the case – that the idea of a national identity is either pointless or undesirable. But he should have the intellectual honesty to say so. Further, his editors should have had the competence to challenge his case more than they obviously did.

The other troubling instance of journalistic failure by a reporter and editors alike – this CNN post noting that a significant chunk of America’s illegal immigrant population is Irish. That’s unquestionably useful information. But neither author Donie O’Sullivan nor his editors had anything direct to say about the real significance of the article: It powerfully undercuts claims that President Trump’s immigration policies, and even his focus on illegal immigration, stem largely from racism.

Starting with its headline, the article does point out that the illegal Irish have a major advantage over much of the rest of the nation’s illegals – their ability to pass more easily for native-born since they’re white. So obviously, enforcement of immigration law nowadays will inevitably be affected to some extent by race and ethnicity. (At the same time, the article helpfully observes that there are many fewer Irish illegals than Mexican illegals in particular.)

O’Sullivan makes abundantly clear how much fear the administration’s policies have struck among the illegal Irish, and even presents some evidence that these fears have some basis in reality, their physical appearance edge notwithstanding. He quotes an official at an organization providing support services for all Irish newcomers as stating that “it seems that the ICE [immigration law enforcement] agents are using their discretion in a much greater capacity now than ever before.”

But it’s absolutely astonishing (or is it?) that the author says absolutely nothing about the screamingly obvious implication of this claim: It’s a sign that immigration law is being enforced in a race- and ethnicity-blind way. And even though the racism charge has deeply colored the national immigration debate especially since President Trump’s harsh description of some Mexican immigrants when he declared his candidacy for the White House, it’s equally astonishing (or is it?) that none of O’Sullivan’s editors at CNN apparently noted this fact’s omission or importance, either.

Bias-free journalism admittedly is difficult to produce, and the challenge is made all the more formidable by the numerous forms bias can take, and how difficult many can be to spot. All the same, these Washington Post and CNN offerings stand as vivid reminders of how far the Mainstream Media that still dominate news dissemination in our democracy remain from meeting it.

Im-Politic: How Trump Could Really Make the News Media Great Again

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CNN, Constitution, First Amendment, Harvard University, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, press freedom, Sean Spicer, The New York Times, Trump, White House Correspondents Association, White House press corps

The nation’s intertwined media and political elites are in an uproar over President-elect Trump’s performance at his press conference yesterday – the first he’s held since July. Their stated fear: Mr. Trump’s refusal to answer questions from a CNN reporter at the session add to evidence that he and his administration will be willing to “retaliate, bully, and ban journalists whose questions he doesn’t want to answer.”

As a result, the media won’t have “the access and information necessary to accurately and honestly cover the new administration” and the public will lose out “on the perspective those reporters bring, and we as an industry lose out in our efforts to hold power accountable.”

Sounds pretty serious. Except here’s what these supposed watchdogs of democracy either don’t get or won’t admit: More than ever before in recent memory, the Mainstream Media that Mr. Trump has so often attacked are hardly the totality of the U.S. media universe. They’re clearly not the totality of the competent or intellectually honest U.S media universe. And therefore, restricting some of their members’ access to American officials no longer means that the public’s right to know need be endangered.

The nation, and especially those increasingly overlapping political and media classes, have gotten so used to the structure of the journalistic universe as it’s evolved in recent decades that everyone’s forgotten that it has never, and shouldn’t be, set in stone. More specifically, although freedom of the press unmistakably is and should be protected vigorously by the Constitution, the role of today’s leading national news organizations, and in particular, the current White House press corps, has no legal or Constitutional basis. Nor should they enjoy such a privilege.

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), for example, exists and itself influences access to White House officials through its membership criteria, solely at the president’s behest. No government officials are required to deal with reporters on its roster, and as the organization itself acknowledges, presidents have treated it with dramatically varying measures of respect and disdain for more than a century.

In fact, the last word on who can interact in the role of journalists with government officials on any level legally belongs with government agencies themselves. In the words of this 2014 Harvard University study on such issues, the First Amendment

“does not cover the full spectrum of newsgathering activity, and, as presently understood, does not confer a right to gather news in particular places or circumstances to which the public is not otherwise admitted. This includes access to private events, as well as access to nonpublic spaces owned by the government (such as government offices and prisons).”

Could American leaders exploit this situation in order to deny the public the information it needs to evaluate their performance, and weaken the vibrancy of truly representative government? Of course. But keep the following three considerations in mind:

First, according to the Harvard report, “Recognizing that effective newsgathering requires greater levels of access than what the First Amendment provides, legislators and regulators at various levels of government have adopted policies granting to a subset of the public identified as the ‘press’ certain privileges to do things that ordinary citizens may not.”

In addition, as this study documents, the courts have demonstrated a clear determination to ensure extensive access by journalists to public officials, and to define “journalist” in ways that have enabled aggressive reporting.

Regarding worries about the presidency in particular, the federal government also contains a legislative branch with plenty of members of opposition political parties. Even disgruntled members of a president’s own party have ample means to disclose information they consider important – either through their authority to compel testimony and reports from the executive, as well as their power of the purse; or by working with the media themselves.  

Second, how democratic would it be to empower the media themselves – which after all consist overwhelmingly of privately owned, profit-seeking businesses – to determine who can attend press conferences and belong to media pools covering traveling leaders? Indeed, how democratic would it be to entrust the establishment media specifically with this responsibility?

These businesses – again at the government’s sufferance – already play a decisive role in these matters. How many Americans – outside Beltway insider circles – are satisfied with the results? And what evidence is available that the White House Correspondents Association has adequately disciplined members who have been exposed as partisans? As little as has been seen from the journalistic employers of these hacks – who don’t seem to have fired any of them.

Third, the better establishment journalists perform at reporting accurately and impartially, the likelier they are to create, maintain or reestablish the kinds of informal relationships with the widest variety of officials that have always been central to the most valuable investigative reporting – as opposed to shouting questions in the White House press room. And don’t forget the importance of filing Freedom of Information Act suits, or even keeping up with information on the public record – which can be astonishingly revealing.  

In the meantime, the incoming administration has indicated that it’s thinking of introducing some badly needed accountability of its own into its dealings with the press – for example, Mr. Trump’s refusal to respond to the CNN reporter in the (not unreasonable) judgment that the organization has too often fallen short of best journalistic practices. Moreover, his press secretary-designate, Sean Spicer, has spoken of changing the authorized White House press pool in various ways in order to reflect better the makeup of contemporary journalism.

So America may be heading towards a world in which presidents (and other senior government officials) don’t feel any particular need to deal with, say, CNN. Or The New York Times. In the short term, the result might be a rocky period for the government, for the media, and possibly for the flow of high quality information a real democracy needs. Yet the status quo ante plainly was not sustainable – both because of new technologies that have been rapidly transforming the media landscape, and because traditional journalism’s recent performance in particular has been so deficient.

But American leaders will still have powerful interests in getting their stories and narratives out through news organizations with large audiences. That’s why I’m confident that, however scornfully they treat individual media companies, they’ll nonetheless wind up dealing with responsible and dedicated journalists. And who knows? Maybe heightened competition will help make the Mainstream Media great again.

Im-Politic: Clinton’s Campaign Sure Thinks the Mainstream Media is “With Her”

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2016 election, ABC News, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, CNN, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, The Intercept, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wikileaks

The word “surrogate” is defined in dictionaries as “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.” Now thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures of internal emails and other strategy documents from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, we know that the Democratic candidate and her operatives believed that many members of the Mainstream Media fit that description for her upcoming White House race as well.

According to a memo released by Wikileaks on Friday, and first reported (to my knowledge) on The Intercept website, the list of journalists viewed by the Clinton-ites as reliable conveyors of her message included numerous opinion journalists whose liberal leanings are no secret. Examples include E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; and David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins of The New York Times.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with their presence. There’s no evidence so far that any of them offered their services to the campaign either voluntarily or in response to a request. And unless material comes out indicating active collusion, although surely most are bristling at the suggestion that they’ve been in the tank for anyone in politics, none of these pundits has any control over how they’re viewed by politicians.

But the Clinton characterization of other list members is much more troubling. Dan Balz of the Post isn’t exactly a pure-play columnist – presumably that’s why his employer doesn’t place his pieces on the op-ed page. But his “news analyses” are supposed to occupy some middle ground between opinion and hard news. That concept isn’t necessarily illegitimate. But maybe the Post could clue its readers in on how it views the relevant distinctions, so they could make up their own minds as to how to view these articles?

Another category of listees is problematic, too, but maybe a little less so, since Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Mathews host talk shows on a cable network (MSNBC) that doesn’t try very hard to hide its partisanship. (Similar criticisms of course can be leveled at many of their counterparts on Fox News.)  

Major problems, however, surround the inclusion of news show hosts and anchors who do style themselves as objective journalists. For reasons, I described yesterday, no one should be surprised that ABC News Sunday talk show host George Stephanopoulos is viewed as a Clinton surrogate. But his CBS counterpart John Dickerson? Wolf Blitzer of CNN? Charlie Rose, who does double duty at CBS and PBS?

And scariest of all is the number of listed journalists who present themselves as completely objective beat reporters, like Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jon King and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, Mara Liasson of NPR, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post. Moreover, in another memo, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman was described as an especially “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” the Clinton team with her performance after their promptings.

Since this material dates from spring, 2015, it’s of course nothing more than speculation (however plausible) to venture that Clinton’s operatives have viewed these same journalists as trusted allies in the campaign against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. (He didn’t declare his candidacy until June.) But the timing is revealing nonetheless because by April, Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, had thrown his hat into the ring, and it was clear by then that many voters in the party’s left wing were recoiling at the prospect of Clinton as liberalism’s standard-bearer.

As a result, these memos add to the case that much of the national press corps has seen its real mission not as reporting events as objectively as possible, or even as fronting for Democrats, but as defending a center-left status quo against populist challengers of all stripes. Certainly Sanders and many of his backers count themselves as victims.

Fortunately, the only silver lining in this picture is a bright one: Americans’ trust in the mass media to give them the straight news dope is at an all-time low, at least according to Gallup. Undoubtedly that’s a big reason why the establishment media’s finances show signs of weakening across the board. If money really does talk in the ranks of these profit-seeking enterprises, mounting business pressures could push them back to their more responsible roots. Or the Mainstream Media’s owners could arrogantly decide to go down with their ships – in which case the big question will be whether investors more devoted to quality journalism will recognize the vacuum they’ve left.

Im-Politic: What Khizr Khan Gets Completely Wrong About America and Islam

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2016 election, ABC News, American Muslims, citizenship, CNN, Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Humayun Khan, identity politics, Im-Politic, immigrants, Islam, Khizr Khan, military, Muslims, naturalization, refugees, terrorism

It’s hard to imagine even the strongest Donald Trump supporter not being moved, at least temporarily, by Khizr Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday night. So many of the elements of an emotional blockbuster were present:  the deep gratitude expressed to America by a Muslim immigrant success story; the supreme patriotic sacrifice made by one of his sons in military service; and the heartbreak of losing a child. And of course for many other Americans, Khan’s remarks raised major questions about the Republican presidential nominee’s views on the domestic security threats posed by refugees and immigrants seeking admission to the United States today, as well as by Muslims already living in the country.

That’s why it’s so important to explain why Khan’s speech, and the rave reviews it’s received in the establishment media, sadly exemplify many of the ways in which Trump’s critics on this score keep undermining constructive debate on these crucial issues.

First, Khan practiced a version of almost-always-irrelevant (at best) identity politics with his headline-making charge that Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one” for his country – unlike the Khans and the families of other “brave patriots who died defending the United States of America.” The clear implication is that the GOP standard-bearer – and all other Americans who haven’t lost family members in combat – have no right to speak out, or perhaps even to hold opinions, on matters concerning eligibility to immigrate or domestic terrorism.

Of course, few positions have been more un-American – at least once the nation began expanding suffrage beyond white male property holders. Freedom of speech and voting and policy-making are now completely independent of not only race and creed and wealth, but of experience – and properly so. Instead, they are functions of, variously, citizenship or residency.

In addition to being philosophically noxious to current notions of representative government, any other approach would be utterly impossible to put into effect. Just to cite one example – whose experience on Muslim immigration should count for more: Those of the Khan family and their like? Or those of the families of the victims of September 11, or San Bernardino, or Orlando?

And as some Twitter commenters have reminded me, Khan’s views on the subject would also deny Hillary Clinton the right to weigh in on these Muslim immigration subjects – for her family hasn’t lost anyone in combat, either.

Second, in recent months, Khan’s speech, along with Trump’s various statements on Muslim immigration, and especially on the American Muslim community, have generated a flood of statements not only expressing outrage that American Muslims’ patriotism could be impugned, but implying that, if anything, this group is actually more patriotic than the U.S. population as a whole. One especially popular version has emphasized how many American Muslims, like Khan’s son, have served in the American armed forces.

Of course, this is another form of identity politics. And “patriotism” can take many different forms. Just as important, though, is noting that, however admirable the life and career of the late Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 by a car bomb, it wasn’t an especially typical U.S. Muslim life.

The emerging conventional wisdom was summed up nicely by CNN: “Many [Muslims] have served in the military protecting the country against terrorists….” Stated ABC News pointedly: “Despite recent rhetoric against the fastest-growing religion in the world, Islam has contributed a great deal to the U.S., including in the military, Defense Department figures show.

“Muslims have played an essential part in guarding the homeland and fighting for its interests in war-torn countries the world over, fighting in all major U.S. Wars….”

But the actual data these statements are based on – when placed into any minimally adequate context – tell a very different story. ABC News cited Pentagon figures as pegging the number of self-identifying Muslims serving in the U.S. military at 5,986 – including reserve and national guard members. That’s out of a total of 2.14 million total personnel in all these branches of the American armed forces. Do the math and U.S. Muslims add up to slightly less than 0.28 percent of servicemen and women.

How does that share compare with Muslim’s total percentage of the U.S. population? Not all that well. For that figure was 0.90 percent, according to a 2014 Pew Foundation study. So although the absolute numbers are tiny, America’s Muslim residents are actually significantly under-represented in the military.

ABC took pains to note that the Defense Department statistics show that “400,000 service members have not self-reported their faith. So the total number of Muslims currently serving in the U.S. military is likely higher.” But by the same logic, the total number of Americans of all faiths serving is likely higher, too. In addition, the Pew report found that the nation’s Muslim population is significantly younger than the American public as a whole, including those of prime military service age. So Muslims’ under-representation is arguably greater than the raw figures indicate.

Again, military service isn’t the only form of patriotism, and patriotism isn’t and shouldn’t be a legal standard for opining or voting or entering politics or government. (Immigrants who want to become naturalized American citizens do need to pass tests on the English language, and American history and government. Moreover, most are required to take an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, including a promise to serve in the military under any relevant Selective Service laws and regulations unless they can prove that their religious or other “deeply held” beliefs bar such activity.)

But the claim that the American military contains surprisingly large numbers of Muslims clearly is false.

Finally, like nearly all other critics of Trump’s Muslim immigrant and domestic Muslim proposals, Khan offers no viable ideas on addressing the special domestic security problems revealed by the data that these populations unquestionably present. In fact, he has compounded the obstacles to needed solutions by joining the chorus accusing Trump (and his supporters) of “consistently [smearing] the character of Muslims.” What Khan and the like continue overlooking is the exponentially disproportionate role played by Muslims – including American citizens and including the children of immigrants, who have been exposed to American values all their lives – in recent terrorist attacks, and the consequent imperative of focusing anti-terrorism efforts on this population.

Worse, Khan’s full-throated support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suggests that he backs her plan to quintuple the admission of Middle East refugees, and thereby inevitably magnify the current threat.

Having never lost a child, I can’t honestly say that I feel the Khan family’s pain. Not being a Muslim, I can’t honestly say that I have experienced or even fully understand the frustrations no doubt felt by the great majority of American Muslims whose beliefs and actions have never jeopardized the United States. But I am someone who at least tries to concentrate on the facts rather than spreading anecdotes (either representative or misleading).

So I do feel justified in maintaining that Khan and his Islamic and non-Islamic enthusiasts need to start purveying less outrage and more wisdom, and recognizing the clear and present dangers posed to Americans by Muslim populations inside and outside the Middle East that are still in general struggling with reconciling their faith with the values of Western secular democracy.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Putting the “Dip” in U.S. Diplomacy

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bailouts, Brazil, China, China meltdown, China stock markets, CNN, Congress, coupling, decoupling, Denise Labott, emerging markets, Exim, Export-Import Bank, export-led growth, free trade agreements, global leadership, Hillary Clinton, IMF, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, Iran, Iran deal, Jackie Calmes, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, The New York Times, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wendy Sherman

It was unintentional to be sure, but the establishment media should get some credit for providing the following two reminders of how positively dippy American foreign policy, and the analysis of this diplomacy, has become.

The latest came just yesterday, in New York Times correspondent Jackie Calmes’ article titled “I.M.F. Breakthrough Is Seen to Bolster U.S. on World Stage.” And in the likely case that Calmes isn’t responsible for the headline, the thrust of the piece is clear from the lead paragraph:

“A string of agreements between the White House and Congress, capped by last month’s surprise accord that ended a five-year impasse over the International Monetary Fund [IMF] has eased, though not dispelled, concern that America is retreating from global economic leadership.”

I’ve already explained here and here (among other places) why Calmes decision to include on this list Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and Congress’ decision to restore to life the Export-Import Bank makes no sense. So I’ll concentrate on the development she focuses on: Congress’ agreement to approve reform of the International Monetary Fund that grants more voting power to so-called “emerging market” (EM) countries like Russia, India, and especially China.

The IMF decision itself is idiotic enough. The rationale – supported by virtually every other member of the Fund – has been that these countries represent the rising powers in the global economic system, and therefore deserve more clout in one of the international organizations charged with overseeing this system. The trouble is, these countries’ wherewithal was greatly exaggerated even when they were growing strongly. The main reason is that their growth depended heavily on exporting to wealthier countries like the United States.

They’re still largely export-dependent, but rather than global growth leaders, they’ve become global growth laggards. Brazil, for example, is facing the prospect of its worst recession in more than a century. On top of its geopolitical trouble-making, Russia’s an economic mess. And China looks not only to be slowing dramatically, but completely incompetent in regulating its financial markets (not to mention its own aggressive regional moves). Even acknowledging that the United States, the European Union countries, and Japan haven’t been economic standouts either for many years, what’s the merit case now for augmenting these countries’ international influence?

But Calmes’ thesis is inane on many more fundamental levels, too. Chiefly, it parrots a series of commonplaces that, though endlessly repeated by mainstream foreign policy analysts and the politicians that bewilderingly still listen to them, keep undermining the effectiveness of American diplomacy. They start with the idea that the IMF, or any other international organization, has counted for much in world affairs. These institutions are logistically useful in providing fora (i.e., “buildings”) in which leading powers that communicate, negotiate, and otherwise deal with each other. But they have no autonomous ability to affect the course of events.

The Fund is often seen as an exception even by avowedly realist thinkers who normally take a dim view of international organizations, but contrary to Calmes’ claim, it per se has never served as “an international lender of last resort to foster global stability.” After all, it has no capacity to create wealth or other resources. In the last analysis, its lending function has always been carried out by the United States and the other major powers, who have used the Fund as a conduit. For two decades starting in the 1970s, the Fund addressed a series of financial crises in developing countries with a series of bailouts (again, financed ultimately by its members) that were conditioned on economic reform programs. But even the Fund’s staff now acknowledges that much of the advice it dispensed was lousy.

And since institutions like the Fund don’t serve as significant force multipliers for strong, wealthy countries like the United States, they’re anything but indispensable for American world leadership, economic or otherwise. As with the case of all countries aspiring to this goal, that flows from America’s own capabilities. Indeed, given America’s still crucial role as the world’s market and consumer of last resort, we’ll know that its economic leadership is at risk when its trade partners figure out another way to grow adequately.

Finally, there’s the question of whether the United States needs world leadership in the first place. I’ve explained in detail why a country this strong, wealthy, and geographically secure can remain more-than-adequately safe and prosperous even in a deeply troubled world. Indeed, America’s matchless capacity for self-sufficiency nowadays argues for less of what foreign policy types call world leadership by Washington – and therefore less exposure to the world’s woes – not more. I’m not saying that these views are beyond criticism. I am saying that they were worth debating even during the Cold War, they’re worth debating more now, and it’s dismaying that no one relying on Calmes or her Mainstream Media counterparts for their news in 2016 would have a clue that it’s not still 1956 strategically.

The second example of foreign policy dippiness came during the summer, from CNN’s Denise Labott’s August profile of Wendy Sherman, the chief staff-level U.S. negotiator of the nuclear weapons deal signed with Iran. Although I’m not enthusiastic about the agreement, I still view it as the best possible option available to America to keep Iran bomb-free short of military strikes. My confidence, however, has definitely been shaken having read Labott’s cheery revelation that “Her first career as a social worker and community organizer may seem like odd training for nuclear negotiations. But Sherman said she actually drew upon those experiences with her Iranian counterparts.”

Continued Labott : “Her ‘caseload’ may be more global, but she said the work is similar — involving the complex relationship and budding detente between Washington and Tehran, as well as managing a series of clients both inside and outside the meeting room.

“‘That skill set came in handy,’ she said. ‘You have to see all the parts in front of you. You really learn how to understand people.'”

Meaning no disrespect for the profession, but I can’t think of a background less suitable than social work for dealing with regimes like Iran’s (or North Korea’s – which was a Sherman responsibility under former President Clinton). Unless you think that the ruthless mullahs in Tehran or the arguably sociopathic leadership in Pyongyang have anything in common with a troubled American individual or family? And that the assignment is providing relief?

From another standpoint, social work and comparable activity are defined by enhancing a client’s well-being. Self-interest doesn’t even enter the picture. Is that how Sherman viewed her priorities? At least judging from this article, that’s how it seems. And Labott apparently considered this nothing less than delightful.

An optimist could finish Labott’s profile relieved that Sherman is now esconced in the academic world. A pessimist, though, could note that she’s a close confidante of her former Foggy Bottom superior, Hillary Clinton, and that she’s being talked about as a possible Secretary of State herself should the Democratic front-runner win the White House.

Im-Politic: Why Trump Has Just Nailed it on Immigration

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birth citizenship, Chuck Todd, CNN, deportation, Donald Trump, E-Verify, executive amnesty, executive order, Gallup, illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Meet the Press, Mitt Romney, NBC News, Obama, Open Borders, polls, The Wall Street Journal

If you harbored any doubts that America’s immigration policy debate has become completely devoid of common sense, and that both the nation’s politicians, pollsters, and media seem determined to outdo each other to keep befogging the real issues and options, look no further than how all of the above treat the issue of deporting immigrants already in the United States illegally. It all adds up to a huge and unnecessary tragedy for American public policy. For a series of realistic deportation-related ideas advocated by immigration restrictionists for many years has always offered the nation by far the most efficient, least costly – and, yes, most humane – solution to the illegals problem.

The big news hook here of course comes from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s latest comments on the subject. To hear it from news organizations like The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, Trump has just come out in favor of rounding up this huge population – estimated at 11 million – and herding them back across the Rio Grande. Thus this morning’s Wall Street Journal headline, “Donald Trump Says He Would Deport Illegal Immigrants.” According to Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” who interviewed Trump for this morning’s program, the candidate’s objectives were considerably narrower – but still pretty ambitious: “[H]e plans to immediately rescind President Obama’s executive order that stopped the deportations of some younger undocumented immigrants who had entered the country as children.”

Yet even Todd lumped together several specific questions that desperately need to be unpacked. First, Trump acknowledged that “the executive order gets rescinded.” Revealingly, however, the new immigration policy plan that he’s just released, which has occasioned this latest round of coverage, didn’t even mention deportation, or even the president’s latest initiative. Trump has indeed mentioned deportation previously, but it appears that his priorities have changed. Why did Todd fail even to note this, either while talking with Trump or later in the program?

Just as important, a Trump rollback of the executive order by no means signals that he would start mass deportations on Day One of his presidency – or ever. Nor is there any reason to suppose that any of the other Republican presidential hopefuls who has opposed the Obama moves would unleash the legions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau (ICE). But ending what critics have rightly called executive amnesty is an essential first step for any eventual illegals strategy that doesn’t (a) simply accept their mass presence and (b) in so doing, inevitably strengthen the policy magnet that’s bound to attract many more with its message of leniency. As Trump himself told Todd (who clearly was in no mood to listen), “We have to make a whole new set of standards.”

Two other critical deportation-related matters ignored by Todd and the Journal. First, even the president for years believed that the (longstanding) immigration policy status quo before his executive order was the law of the land. As such, it reflected a national political consensus on the subject. And as such, it’s curious that anyone who’s not an Open Borders ideologue would view a return to this status quo – after a brief departure – as front page news, or even especially noteworthy from a real-world perspective (as opposed to a political perspective).

Second, the president’s initial, much more cautious, view of his immigration authority could soon be re-validated by the courts. So restoring the deportation status quo ante could be not only a substantive nothing-burger, but a legal and constitutional necessity.

Not that Todd, The Wall Street Journal, or the Mainstream Media as a whole deserve all the blame for deportation’s prominence in the immigration debate. Opinion polls have repeatedly cited the round up as the only, or one of the only, alternatives to paths to legal residency or citizenship in dealing with the illegal population. Here are just two examples from CNN/ORC, and from Gallup. And as suggested above, politicians have contributed to the confusion. In addition to Trump himself, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called his illegals strategy “self-deportation.”

Here’s the rub, though. Romney actually got it pretty near right on the substance. As he explained (futilely, of course):

“The answer is self-deportation, which is people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here. And so we’re not going to round people up.”

The former governor continued: “The way that we have in this society is to say, look, people who have come here legally would, under my plan, be given a transition period and the opportunity during that transition period to work here, but when that transition period was over, they would no longer have the documentation to allow them to work in this country. At that point, they can decide whether to remain or whether to return home and to apply for legal residency in the United States, get in line with everybody else. And I know people think but that’s not fair to those that have come here illegally.”

Even better, Romney went on to address the need to turn off the jobs magnet:

“We’d have a card that indicates who’s here illegally. And if people are not able to have a card, and have through an E-Verify system determine that they are here illegally, then they’re going to find they can’t get work here. And if people don’t get work here, they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.” And later on in the campaign, Romney specified that illegals should be denied public benefits.

That is to say, Romney in his own often-fumbling way, hit on by far the best fundamental way to handle the illegals problem – eliminating the incentives attracting them and keeping them here in the first place. And Chuck Todd and The Wall Street Journal to the contrary, that’s exactly the emerging focus of Trump’s illegals strategy.

His immigration blueprint would make the E-Verify system mentioned by Romney mandatory nation-wide, in order to prevent businesses from hiring illegals with impunity. It strangely did not specify that government benefits would be denied to illegals. But that explicit proposal probably isn’t too far down the road, as the Trump plan has noted that “The costs for the United States [of supporting illegal immigrants] have been extraordinary: U.S. taxpayers have been asked to pick up hundreds of billions in healthcare costs, housing costs, education costs, welfare costs, etc. Indeed, the annual cost of free tax credits alone paid to illegal immigrants quadrupled to $4.2 billion in 2011.”

Trump’s most controversial proposal is ending “birthright citizenship” – the longstanding practice of awarding U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born on U.S. territory – which he has described as “the biggest magnet for illegal immigration.” But ending federal aid for Sanctuary Cities and other measures to crack down harder on illegal alien criminals and even those who overstay visas – who comprise roughly 40 percent of the illegal population – are bound to attract much more support with voters on both sides of the aisle.

One other important and encouraging feature of Trump’s plan that I’m sure the Mainstream Media in particular will overlook: As I’ve recommended, it dramatically shifts the focus of blame for America’s immigration policy mess from foreign governments (which, to be sure, aren’t blameless) to the real culprit: the nation’s corporate cheap labor lobby. Leading off the plan is the charge that When politicians talk about “immigration reform” they mean: amnesty, cheap labor and open borders. The Schumer-Rubio immigration bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties. Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first – not wealthy globetrotting donors.”

And you thought the political establishment, and the political reporters who coddle them, couldn’t be more scared of Donald Trump?

Im-Politic: The Media’s Anti-Trump Trade and Immigration Canards

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2016 elections, apparel, China, CNN, Donald Trump, E-Verify, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, Immigration, imports, Jake Tapper, Jeb Bush, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, Marco Rubio, Milliken & Co., North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, textile machinery, textiles, Trade, Washington Post

I don’t want RealityChek to turn into Donald Trump Defense HQ, but media coverage of the tycoon-turned-GOP-presidential-candidate remains such a transparent exercise in (ignorant) sliming, and so much of the mudslinging focuses on his trade and immigration policy positions, that I’ve got to return to the subject yet again.

This past week, countless pundits and reporters (and their editors) clearly have decided that they can at least slow Trump’s surge in the polls by portraying him as an economic hypocrite. Hence the burst of columns and stories slamming the candidate as a trade protectionist whose signature apparel products are made in China, and as an immigration xenophobe and racist whose construction projects employ illegal aliens. What they really show are classic examples of, in effect, blaming the victim. Here’s what I mean.

I first ran into this tactic in the early 1990s, shortly after starting to concentrate on trade policy issues upon being hired by the Economic Strategy Institute. One of ESI’s original corporate donors was Milliken & Co., a huge textiles manufacturer. And as its activities in supporting organizations critical of U.S. trade policy started to attract coverage, news articles and material from various hired guns of the nation’s offshoring lobby invariably mentioned that, although Milliken enthusiastically backed restrictions on imports that competed with its own products, it had no qualms using foreign-made textile production machinery in its factories. Obvious hypocrisy, right?

When I checked with the firm’s Washington, D.C. staff, though, I got an answer that somehow the critics never mentioned: The same American approach to trade that was threatening the textile industry had also destroyed domestic textile production machinery making. The main reason? These U.S. policies failed to recognize that foreign rivals were just as determined to monopolize global textile machinery manufacturing at America’s expense – through subsidies, dumping, and other forms of economic predation – as they were to monopolize the production of fabric itself via the same tactics. As a result, any U.S. company that wanted to continue turning out textiles and related products had little choice but to use imported production equipment.  I’m still waiting for the Mainstream Media to acknowledge its oversight.

Donald Trump faces the same kind of problem. At some point recently, he decided that selling men’s business clothing and accessories could be a good money-maker. But when he looked for manufacturers, he discovered that most of the American apparel business had been displaced by imports. Just to give an idea of how great the damage has been, since the current phase of American trade policy began at the start of 1994 with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S. garment production is down by nearly 78 percent in real terms. In many individual segments of this industry, losses have been much greater. For example, from 2005 through 2013 alone, American men’s neckwear output sank from a paltry $362.39 million to $127.38 million – a nosedive of nearly 55 percent.  (These figures are calculated from the databases of the Federal Reserve’s industrial production reports and the Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Manufactures, respectively.)  

But none of this was apparently known to CNN’s Jake Tapper, to cite just one example. He plainly thought he had engineered a Pulitzer-worthy “gotcha” moment when, during an interview with Trump, he revealed that he was wearing a Trump brand tie that was made in China. Responding to the anchor’s accusation of hypocrisy, the candidate responded, “I say my ties, many times, are made in China, not all of them by the way, but a lot of them are made in China, because they’ve manipulated their currency to such a point that it’s impossible for our companies to compete with them. When it comes to outsourcing jobs, which is what this tie would be a representative issue of, one of the issues is that the people in China, the laborers, are paid a lot less, and the standards are worse when it comes to the environment and healthcare, and worker safety.”

And Tapper’s comeback after being schooled in the unmistakable macro-realities of doing business globally? An anecdote: “American Apparel makes stuff here–.”

But what about Trump’s use of illegal immigrant laborers to build his fancy apartment towers and resorts? The Washington Post clearly thought it had spotted another example of Trump fakery when it reported that “a Trump company may be relying on some undocumented workers to finish” a big D.C. hotel project. To his credit, correspondent Antonio Olivo gave Trump’s spokespeople ample opportunity to make the point that, as has become the norm in the construction business, big firms use independent contractors to supply laborers, and that it’s these companies’ responsibility to ensure that they’re properly documented. What was less clear – and this is the fault of Trump’s staff – is that very effective counterfeiting of the needed documents is commonplace, and that even the largest contractors aren’t able to verify them adequately, especially when labor needs to be supplied ASAP.

What the Post should have added, however, is that for more than a decade, the nation has had available a highly effective system for fighting phony residence papers – E-Verify. The good news: Even detractors admit that the internet-based system “catches 4.5 undocumented workers for every one U.S. worker wrongly identified.” The bad news: its use is still largely voluntary.

I haven’t been able to find a Trump statement of support for mandating E-Verify’s use, but is it remotely plausible that he’d oppose it? Doubtful, especially since such immigration enthusiasts like his rivals Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have praised the program – despite failing to say explicitly that they’d expand it to cover all employers.

Unquestionably, Trump’s campaign can be legitimately criticized on any number of grounds, and his trade and immigration positions are eminently debatable, too. But in almost entirely concentrating their attacks on Trump in uninformed trade and immigration-related cheap shots, the Mainstream Media is revealing much more about its own pro-establishment, anti-Main Street biases than about its target.