Jonathan Chait really nails it here.

New York Magazine

The manipulation of journalism is perhaps Donald Trump’s only real talent. His career was created by deceiving the media into presenting him as a budding tycoon when he had done almost nothing in business. He used the media to reinflate his reputation repeatedly, after repeatedly driving the business he inherited into the ground, and expertly learned how to bully critics while courting sycophants.

I’ve had my occasional disagreement with Chait. Okay, I’ve had almost nothing but disagreements with Chait. But this week, by yimminy, this week has has nailed a basic truth. Make that Truth. Truth. The real question is: how does he do it? Or rather, what makes supposedly respectable journalists willing to go along?

It is not clear, however, that he has bothered to pass any of this hard-won expertise on to the next generation. Eric Trump has uncovered an email from Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who has exposed a number of Trump Organization schemes, some of which are now under investigation. In the email, Fahrenthold politely offers his contact information to a Trump Organization employee. Eric is scandalized:

What shocks Eric is that Fahrenthold writes to Trump Organization employees and offers to listen to what they might know. Treating Trump employees as if they are people is clearly beyond the pale.

Paul Krugman on how Trumpism is sinking a nearly unsinkable economy.

New York Times

With each passing week it becomes ever clearer that Donald Trump’s trade war, far from being “good, and easy to win,” is damaging large parts of the U.S. economy. Farmers are facing financial disaster; manufacturing, which Trump’s policies were supposed to revive, is contracting; consumer confidence is plunging, largely because the public (rightly) fears that tariffs will raise prices.

If you want to get a good idea of how long it will be before Trump admits that he was wrong about this fundamental aspect of his “strategy,” you only have to remember one word: Alabama.

Some of Trump’s most consequential actions involve his frantic efforts to dismantle environmental regulation. Unlike tariffs, this may at first sound like something business would want. It turns out, however, that many businesses want to keep those regulations in place. Major oil and gas producers oppose Trump’s relaxation of rules on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Major auto producers have come out against Trump’s attempt to roll back fuel efficiency standards. In fact, in a move that has reportedly enraged Trump, several companies have reached an agreement with the state of California to stick with Obama-era rules despite the change in federal policy.

Which has only accelerated Trump’s efforts to simply override California’s ability to set their own standards, which is baked into the Clean Air Act.

Laurie Roberts on how Arizona conservatives actually fear guns … in black hands.

Arizona Republic

One of Arizona’s leading lights has explained to us the problem with gun violence in America. No, it’s not the ready access to guns by any Tom, Dick or crazy Harry who wants one. Certainly, it’s not the fact you can get a military assault-style weapons – along with 100-round drum magazines to boost the bloodshed on your killing field – without the bother of a background check. The problem, we are told, is that “black and brown communities” are armed.

Okay, I’m waiting for the rest of this statement, but I’m not expecting it to be any less racist when it’s all explained.

Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale and a staunch Second Amendment supporter, recently addressed a forum on how to stop gun violence, particularly how to craft gun policy that does not disproportionately target people of color. His answer, as first reported by Cronkite News, seemed to suggest that we should target people of color. “I hate to bring realism to any of the conversation and I can see you taking a deep breath already, ‘What is this nutcase going to say now?’ ” Lawrence told the group. “Black and brown communities, if you look at the weapons that they have, they are not licensed. They are better armed than the police officers who are supposed to be controlling them. They have firearms galore. Black and brown communities, black communities in particular, have gangs. And the gangs have to be stopped.”

Yup. Just what you’d expect. Not only are “black and brown communities” too well armed for this 2nd Amendment activist, the police officers are “supposed to be controlling them.”

Joan Walsh on the importance of not letting Biden determine what’s important about Biden.

The Nation

Is it possible that the Democrats’ second-oldest presidential candidate, former vice president Joe Biden, has mastered the newest reality of American politics: that in the post-Trump world, factual details don’t matter as much as gut feelings? Biden and his advisers seem to think so. He is refusing to admit there was anything fundamentally wrong with an emotional story he told on the campaign trail last month, about giving a medal to a heartbroken veteran, although The Washington Post revealed that Biden got crucial details wrong—including the date, the place, the soldier’s military branch, his heroic deed, and the type of medal he won. … To be fair, in 2011 Biden did pin a medal on a soldier who insisted he didn’t deserve it, Army SSgt. Chad Workman, who tried and failed to pull a colleague from a burning vehicle. But the details of that soldier’s story were almost entirely different from Biden’s tale.

That much is enough to make it more true than any story that Trump has told. Especially any story that Trump has told about any “big strong man crying” or anyone who ever called Donald Trump “sir.”

The Washington Post’s running tally of Donald Trump’s lies since Inauguration Day 2017 has passed 12,000. Biden seems to think, given that backdrop, his mistakes won’t hurt him—or at least shouldn’t. Part of me admires the former vice president’s pluck. It remains true that the media, while critical of Trump, has one standard for the prevaricating president, and another for the Democrats challenging him, just as so many reporters did for Hillary (But her e-mails!) Clinton in 2016. Maybe Biden thinks toughing this one out will keep the press focused on the bigger issue: Trump’s manifest incompetence and corruption.

Sorry. I’m not quite ready to draw the line for what’s important on the other side of facts.

Will Bunch on whether African-American support makes Biden unbeatable.

Philadelphia Inquirer

There are still a total of 20 people running for the Democratic nomination, down from the original rugby scrum of 25. The first actual votes, at the Iowa caucuses, are nearly five months away. And on this afternoon, the 10 leading candidates were taking turns on a bright stage in Manhattan, offering complicated, competing plans about how to quickly wean the United States off fossil fuels and stop greenhouse-gas pollution over the next decade. But spend some time in a predominantly black neighborhood like North Philadelphia and you can’t help but wonder if any of that even matters, if it’s already all over but the shouting (which there will certainly be a lot of). In the five months since he entered the 2020 race as the Democratic front-runner, Biden’s lead among African American voters — who are about one-quarter of the party’s primary electorate, and far more than that in critical early states such as South Carolina — has been a large, immovable object for anyone else hoping to dislodge Barack Obama’s two-term vice president. For example, a recent Morning Consult poll showed Biden with a sizable lead among African American voters — 41 percent to 20 percent for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose black support is largely among those under age 30. When you get to older black voters like Hanks and Scott, Biden’s backing leaps to nearly two-thirds. Meanwhile, two trailblazing candidates — Sens. Kamala Harris of California, seeking to become the first woman of color in the Oval Office, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, the former Newark mayor raised on urban politics -- are barely making a dent.

I could see someone else taking that support if Biden fails to win in Iowa or New Hampshire. If Kamala Harris hangs in there decently in the first two states, South Carolina could easily be her first win.

Michael Tomasky on how the NRA could finally be taken down.

Daily Beast

Over the holiday weekend, in between various sports and Dorian coverage, I caught a few minutes of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott giving a press conference following the mass shooting in Odessa. Few sights make me sicker than watching Republican politicians after these massacres holding press conferences to reassure people that they’ve got everything under control. No, dude. We have this situation in the first place in part because of people like you. Last month, at the time of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, I wrote a column in which I discussed Abbott, who had just signed 10 pro-gun bills into law. He signed these before the El Paso and Odessa tragedies, but as you may have read recently, they went into effect just after seven more bodies piled up in Odessa. My favorite is the one that prohibits “no firearms” clauses in residential leases, because the one thing we as a society most definitely need to do is to make it easier for people to rent apartments and fill them up with arsenals that rival that of a small country.

To be fair, Abbott’s new laws also made it easier to carry guns in churches and schools. Because everyone knows that shooters always go for “soft targets.” Like Texas. It’s funny, little Rhode Island has less than a third the rate of death by firearm as Texas. Guess they’re all packing up there, otherwise how could they be so safe?

… there are some races to watch in next year’s elections. The biggest and most obvious one is the Senate race in Arizona. The incumbent is Republican Martha McSally, whom the governor named to fill John McCain’s term. The Democratic challenger is Mark Kelly, the ex-astronaut and husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the former House member who was shot in the head outside a supermarket in 2011. Obviously, reining in guns is pretty central to his campaign. With his wife, he’s the co-founder of a political action committee dedicated to trying to take down the most pro-gun Republicans. McSally got $227,000 from pro-gun lobbies in the 2018 cycle, making her the second-leading recipient of gun money that year. Over her career, according to opensecrets.org, the NRA has invested $300,000 in her. So little wonder that just three weeks ago, when asked by a constituent about mass shootings, she issued the brave reply: “I believe in states’ rights. Most problems can be solved at the state and local level.”

Charles Pierce on Trump’s robbing the Pentagon to pay wall.

Esquire

Back when the Affordable Care Act was new, and Republican governors were turning down the FREE MONEY! being offered to their states for the purposes of expanding Medicaid, I remember thinking that everything I'd learned about politics in the Massachusetts State House had been thrown in the hopper forever. One of the first things I learned was that, regardless of the source, you simply never turn down FREE MONEY! And, of course, FREE MONEY! from the Feds is extra-double-good because, relative to other sources, it's fairly clean. But, as it turns out, times have changed and stretching poor people on the rack to entertain your base and to own the libs now take precedence over other, more traditional political incentives, god help us all. We're seeing the same kind of thing going on now that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is diverting $3.6 billion in military funding to pay for construction of his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall along the southern border. This diversion includes $48 million from Texas, where Republican Senator John Cornyn is standing for re-election next year, $80 million from North Carolina, where Republican Senator Thom Tillis is standing for re-election next year, and eight-million from Colorado, where Republican Senator Cory Gardner is standing for re-election. There was a time, and not so long ago, where senators would fight like rabid bats to keep their states from losing this kind of FREE MONEY!

No Republican dare admit that they care as much about military families as they do about Trump’s ego.

Can you imagine trying to pry $48 million in military spending, money earmarked for child-care and new schools, away from Texas when Lyndon Johnson was the senator there? They'd need dental records to identify what was left of your presidency. But this is a new world and nothing is more important than indulging a batty president* and his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall. And, of course, owning the libs.

Leonard Pitts on the sad decline in the quality of Trump’s lies.

Miami Herald

If you’re going to lie, make it a good one. Meaning, put some effort into it. Make it convincing. Make sure the truth is not easily discoverable. Don’t just draw on a weather map with a Sharpie. That’s apparently what Donald Trump or someone in his employ did last week to prove he was right all along in claiming the state of Alabama lay in the path of Hurricane Dorian. He made this claim via Twitter Sunday morning and it was so alarmingly wrong that the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service quickly tweeted an emphatic correction: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”

You can tell that Pitts was writing this on Thursday, because by the middle of Friday, Trump had gone much further to indulge his Alabama fantasy, including co-opting NOAA to go after the NHS.

A smart person would have let it go at that. A smart person would have said, “Oops, my bad” and moved on. Trump, not to put too fine a point on it, is not a smart person. Worse, he is saddled with a congenital inability to admit when he is wrong. So what followed Wednesday in the Oval Office was both predictable and pathetic. Trump trotted out a forecast map on which someone had used a black marker to extend the storm’s possible track across the southeastern tip of Alabama. Reporters asked if someone had drawn on the map. “I don’t know,” said Trump.

As of Saturday afternoon, Hurricane Dorian was bringing it’s hurricane force winds to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. At this point, it’s hit everything except Alabama.