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Donald Trump Tag

By now you probably have read the stories about how Trump called a meeting with the press, only to give them a dressing down. If you don't care all that much---well, the press certainly does. Just as an example, read this from David Remnick of the New Yorker:
The fantasy of the normalization of Donald Trump—the idea that a demagogic candidate would somehow be transformed into a statesman of poise and deliberation after his Election Day victory—should now be a distant memory, an illusion shattered. First came the obsessive Twitter rants directed at “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live.” Then came Monday’s astonishing aria of invective and resentment aimed at the media, delivered in a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower...

At this time of year, we're bombarded with articles about "How to talk to your family about politics at Thanksgiving" and this year it seems like there have been more than usual. I guess we can chalk that up to it being such a hard fought election. Most of these articles focus on ways to diffuse tense situations and get along but Helen Ubiñas of the Philadelphia Inquirer has a different suggestion. She wants people to fight with their Trump supporting relatives. From her column:
This Thanksgiving, don't play nice with the racist, sexist, misogynist Trump voters It's been a little over a week since President-Elect Donald Trump's victory, and I'm going to ask us to stop doing something that we are hardwired to do, to reject what is arguably the human race's best trait. Adapt. We shouldn't.

Something to give—surprised—thanks for this morning: an MSNBC anchor staunchly defending school choice and Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Education . . . while ably and aggressively arguing the issues with the head of America's biggest teachers' union! Stephanie Ruhle is the MSNBC anchor in question, and she took on Randi Weingarten, head of the AFT teachers' union. The topic at hand was Donald Trump's naming of school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Weingarten, acknowledging that the union is "so opposed" to DeVos, repeatedly accused Trump's pick of wanting to take a "sledgehammer" to public schools in an effort to "destabilize"them.

If you didn't read Legal Insurrection, you might think that liberal arts Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, just north of New York City, is an island of tolerance, understanding and freedom of thought. That's what its website says. But since you read Legal Insurrection, you know that for the past several years Vassar has been rocked by intellectual intolerance and antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. Some faculty have been in the lead in creating this atmosphere, and the administration more often than not turned away from confronting the problem head on. Here are a few of my posts about Vassar (you can view all of them here):

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Republican philanthropist Betsy Devos to head the Depart of Education. DeVos has made a name for herself by championing school choice:
DeVos is the chairman of the American Federation for Children, the nation’s largest school choice advocacy group. The federation has worked at the state and local level to advance the expansion of charter schools and other education reforms. She and her husband, entrepreneur Dick DeVos, created the West Michigan Aviation Academy, a charter high school in Grand Rapids, in 2011.

As half the country learned two weeks ago, we do not select our president by popular vote, our president is selected by Electors in our Electoral College; a safeguard against pure democratic rule. As far as modern history is concerned, Elector's votes are typically congruent with their respective state's popular vote. Now, a handful of Democratic electors are threatening to vote their conscience:
At least a half-dozen Democratic electors have signed onto an attempt to block Donald Trump from winning an Electoral College majority, an effort designed not only to deny Trump the presidency but also to undermine the legitimacy of the institution.

Assuming this statement by Kellyanne Conway proves to be the case, it's a major promise broken by Trump. The NY Post reports:
President-elect Donald Trump won’t subject Hillary Clinton to a criminal inquiry — instead, he’ll help her heal, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. “I think when the president-elect who’s also the head of your party … tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content, to the members,” Kellyanne Conway told the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who first reported that the president-elect would not pursue his campaign pledge to “lock up” Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

Imagine if just after the 2008 election, a conservative pundit had said this of President-elect Obama: "how do you dog-train Obama? I mean it tough. Dog train. If he poops in the hall, you make his nose go in it." Western civilization as we know it might have ended right there. But on this evening's Hardball, that's precisely what Chris Matthews said—except about Donald Trump, of course. His point seemed to be that Trump must be brought to heel should he have the audacity to follow through on his promises to build the wall and end Obamacare.

On With All Due Respect, John Heilemann was aggressively questioning Kellayanne Conway, arguing that conflicts of interests would arise when the Trump administration makes decisions that could affect Trump business interests at home or abroad. Conway eventually had enough. She shot back: "look, John, I know the election results are very tough to swallow, particularly for those of you who just couldn't see it coming, couldn't even conceive of the possibility that the other candidate may actually win, that you don't understand America." Ouch.

Recently, there has been one bright spot for me remaining a California resident: The sheer entertainment value offered by the dramatic response of our leading politicians to President-elect Trump. For example, our state's representatives are lining up to work actively against our new President. The apparent goal is to make California to Trump what Texas was to Obama.
In the early morning hours after Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States, California Senate leader Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon were on the phone grappling with what comes next.