Fox News’ Roger Ailes Calls Trump ‘Disturbing’

Chris Christie and Donald Trump have a lot in common. They’re both intellectually challenged, over-entitled/-indulged/-enabled and heavily insecure. They’re both bullies with an unhealthy lust for absolute power, attention and permission to do what they want, say what they want, when they want. Both are a seething mass of neuroses that multiplies like a group of cancer cells in the pancreas and neither can conceive of the possibility that their adoring audience might tire of them or that they might meet somebody who can take them down.

Sociopaths of this sort always amass a lot of rope. An can’t resist hanging themselves. Their fathomless insecurity can never be sated; the more they get the more they crave and the less self-control they have. Pushing boundaries is the drug for them. The more attention they get the more they truly believe they’re infallible, and the more reckless they become.

Christie destroyed his political career when he was close to the top of his game. Now the Donald, although much more potent and sinister than Christie and with a huge fan base and a real political chance, is slipping on the banana skin of his own ego.

A few weeks ago at the first Republican debate, Fox News reporter Megyn Kelly asked him some straightforward questions about his attitude and treatment of women. Being confronted always hits a nerve with him and he blew a fuse, insulting Kelly then and afterwards for days on Twitter, causing an uproar. Kelly wasn’t intimidated by Trump and didn’t back down. She’s a star at Fox News with her own big fan base and influence. 

But Fox News Top Dog Roger Ailes made peace with Trump. Of course he did. Trump is the best thing since sliced bread for Fox. Kelly went on unexpected leave for eleven days and everything settled down.

So Trump got away with it, but not without damage under the surface , which is the dangerous kind. And if you touch the nerve of a egotist with the kinds of living, breathing neuroses that dominate Trump they can’t forget. He couldn’t leave it alone.

Kelly got back from vacation. Out of the blue Trump started tweeting rank insults about her again, calling her a bimbo and a lousy journalist. Roger Ailes didn’t try to make peace this time. His official response was; “Donald Trump’s surprise and open attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing.” He went on to say that FOX News supports and values the work that Kelly does in asking candidates questions they find difficult to answer and that Trump should apologize.

The word ‘disturbing’ is the one Trump should be careful of. The inference is that he’s not firing on all cylinders. Well hello. Of course this all could be a ploy by Ailes to keep the war alive because of its impact on ratings. But maybe it's not. If Fox withdraws its coverage of Trump can he survive?

Without the kind of glutinous media attention Fox provides, people will forget him. He’ll get more and more reckless and obnoxious to try and get their attention back. And the show’s over, folks.

That’s not all. A few days ago Trump held a press conference in Iowa. When Emmy Award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos asked an inconvenient question without being selected—because Trump refused to select him—Trump wouldn’t answer and said, “Excuse me, sit down, you weren’t called, sit down. Sit down. Sit down.” Ramos refused to sit or be silenced. He wasn’t shouting or screaming or being unreasonable, he was simple speaking, in a very even tone. Trump told him to go back to Univision, addressing him like a man who isn’t an animal-lover would command a dog.

The incident was captured on video, of course. Trump looked over to the side, nodded his head to somebody and said “Go ahead”. A huge security guard walked behind him and ‘escorted’ Ramos out the room. He went protesting, but again still not shouting or screaming. The man has dignity.

Something Trump doesn’t know the meaning of. On being asked why Ramos was removed  he said “I don’t know really much about him. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him—except he started screaming—I didn’t escort him out; you’ll have to talk to security, whoever security is…”

Jorge Ramos, who works for the Spanish language channel Univision, made the cover of Time Magazine’s World’s Most Influential People Issue. He came back in 15 minutes later and jousted with Trump, neither giving way.

Trump has already lost 75% of the Latino vote with his racist ranting about all Mexicans being rapists and thugs and wanting to deport everybody who’s undocumented regardless of how it shatters even children’s lives. And then there’s the Wall… Clearly he believes he can win without the Latino vote. But then, he believes he could strong-arm Iran into signing an agreement that makes them absolute slaves to America and that he could bomb the whole of ISIL out of existence.

The man's a lunatic. He’d be entertaining if he weren’t so ugly. If he hadn’t destroyed so many lives and done it with such pleasure and ease. Nothing entertaining about that.

But it is fascinating to watch sociopaths take themselves down. That it always happens gives me faith in being human. We’re not built to abuse others so when somebody does they can’t sustain the internal culture that drives their abuse. Along the path of their own destruction, though, they take an awful lot of people down with them. That’s the hard part. 

I must say, though, for Roger Ailes to call Trump 'disturbing' is more than a little ironic. What a circus.

Jon Stewart's Words on Humility Come Back to Haunt Governor Chris Christie

Photo David Weigel

Slate Political Reporter

Sometimes the past comes back to haunt you. Sometimes comedians have an uncanny knack for exposing a person’s Achilles heel. Jon Stewart interviewed Chris Christie in early December 2012 and asked him about humility in politicians.

Jon Stewart: "The storm seemed like it humbled you to some extent—"

Christie: "Of course it did—"

Stewart: "…My point is... thinking about other people’s circumstances sometimes, while it doesn’t seem as catastrophic as Sandy, is sometimes important to humble politicians, to understand that maybe people aren’t mooching… lazy…[or] looking for government to support them—"

Christie: "By the way, all these things that you’ve just said are not things that I’ve said. I will be very harsh on people who I think are out of line and stupid. And I’m not gonna— and I’m from New Jersey and so are you and we don’t mince words and everybody who watches this show knows that you don’t mince words, that’s why there’s so many beeps—"

Stewart: (Playing along, laughing) "...I’m a word mincer—"

Christie: "The point from my perspective is, if somebody stands up at a town hall meeting and asks a question and won’t let me answer it and I keep trying to answer it and they keep interrupting. There’s two ways you can deal with this. You can be a phony politician and say ‘well, jeez, I’m really put off by the way you’re treating me’… or you can say ‘sit down and shut up you idiot and let me answer the question.’ Right? That doesn’t make me non-humble, it makes me honest. It’s saying ‘listen, you’re being an idiot and if you are an idiot I’m gonna call you an idiot and if you don’t like it then stop acting like an idiot.’"

Jon Stewart’s laughter wasn’t about amusement. Which Christie didn’t seem to understand. He got a rise from the audience and that’s what he registered. In fact the seriousness of Stewart’s line of questioning seemed to have evaded him completely.

An honest man? It’s debatable. Because when Christie calls somebody an idiot, this is how it plays out. He’s at a town hall meeting and somebody who is angry with his policies because they’ve been personally affected, wants to ask a question. Christie gives them the go ahead but everything in his body language says ‘you’re an idiot’. His facial expression is very unaccommodating. It’s intimidating and anybody who’s experienced that and been affected by it will know that it’s hard to remember everything you wanted to say.

Anyway, the person will ask their question as best they can. Christie will listen until they’re finished. Again with the body language. Nothing about it that says ‘I really want to hear what you’ve got to say’. Then he’ll launch. If they disagree with anything that he says along the way he shouts them down and says ‘I respected you enough to listen to what you had to say. So you need to respect me enough to listen to what I have to say.’ And that’s when he calls them an idiot and humiliates them something awful. It’s shocking to watch. It’s also when he really comes alive.  The Ed Show has a couple of sickening examples. 

In the Jon Stewart interview Christie made as if it’s all a joke and just the New Jersey way of doing things. But he’s not joking when it happens, and it’s not funny for his victims. It’s about power and abuse of it.

As to Christie’s comment that he and Jon Stewart are both from the same state, where people don’t mince their words, it wasn’t smart. Jon Stewart is a comedian; it’s his job to not mince words. Christie is an elected official, whose role is to listen to his constituents and take their problems seriously.

Now Christie is facing a hearing that has recently flooded his administration with subpoenas. Christie first said he would co-operate fully in the interests of truth and transparency then has hired what Bloomberg Businessweek calls a “smash-mouth” defense lawyer – Randy Mastro. Mastro has gone against the Mob in New York, but he’s currently representing Chevron in its civil racketeering lawsuit against plaintiffs’ activist attorney Steven Donziger in an attempt to overturn a 2011 multibillion-dollar verdict in Ecuador awarded to poor rain forest residents who sued Chevron for environmental contamination. He’s fearless, ruthless, and expensive. There must be a reason why Christie needs him. Innocence doesn’t somehow spring to mind. 

And Christie’s problems keep piling up. He had planned to campaign for Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina in Spring, but the New York Times reports that the Senator said  last week that Christie wouldn’t be welcome because the focus would be on him and not in a good way. Kenneth G. Langone, Christie’s biggest funder and a huge supporter, expressed disgust at the GWB fiasco, saying “it upset the hell out of me”. He hasn’t said he’ll withdraw his support but he has told Christie to be smarter about those he surrounds himself with. 

The man who thought he could conquer the US with his brand of bragadaccio has dropped it and is avoiding public speaking as much as possible. One wonders whether now he knows what Jon Stewart was talking about regarding humility.

The Outrage Over NSA Surveillance - Should American Pay for their Own Security?

The haves in Western society have gotten used to being able to have their cake and eat it, and to not have to pay for the consequences of their actions, and even for their freedom. Somebody else pays, but that doesn’t trouble us too much.

In times of recession the have-less slip down the ladder dangerously close to the have-nots, but in boom times so far enough have recovered enough to keep the system going, despite that they’re paying too high a price. Working for wages that don’t reflect their contribution so that corporations and their shareholders can profit. Spending beyond their means so that banks can make a profit.

And then everybody kind of becomes unaccountable. The have-nots of course pay for everything and over time that group gets bigger and bigger. But a lot of people look the other way. It won’t happen to me. Even if it did happen once, it won’t happen again. It seems to be human nature. Until you’re down and you just can’t get up again. Then you realize, I have the power to change this. And then the whole world changes for you.

But those people are in the minority. Just as it happens at an individual level, it does with societies. The majority believe that what they do in their lives from moment to moment and the choices they make have nothing to do with the trouble that their country gets into. Of course they’re right in some ways. Leaders fabricate wars to oust inconvenient rulers or parties or squander budgets. Politicians steal the money and/or do what the wealthy and powerful want them to do. Bankers bankrupt entire economies and get away with it: correction, are rewarded for it.

But none of it could happen if every citizen actively participated in elections, which means finding out everything there is to find about candidates before they’re elected. Then communicating with them on everything they do. Protesting every single time they step out of line.

Some do it more than others, but the majority of us wait until something really disastrous happens then we wait for the next election and we vote differently, unless we allow ourselves to get seduced by bland election promises or we’re blinded by our prejudices. We’d rather hold onto them than properly inform ourselves.

And when an unjust war is started on the pretext of protecting our freedom, we accept it and look away from the fact that somebody else is paying for that real or imagined freedom. The soldiers, for one. Innocent civilians for another, just wanting to live their lives in peace, learn their own lessons in their own way, being smashed to pieces. Maybe dying, maybe surviving to live the rest of their lives in hell, their family, town and country destroyed.

Americans are being given the choice of actually paying the price themselves for their own security now, with the Obama Administration’s intelligence gathering. Isn’t it better than making others pay? Creating a fake war on a false pretext and bombing the hell out of a country? Conning US soldiers who get physically and mentally maimed or destroyed into believing they did something noble? Conning parents into believing they're sacrificing their children for something great, so that they'll  encourage the rest of the children to give themselves up like so much fodder? Illegally holding 'suspects' and illegally torturing them, treating them like animals?

For the war in Iraq the US military sent its missionaries into poor urban areas and targeted young men who had no jobs, no resources, no opportunities. Congressmen and Senators didn't send their own sons to fight. In fact they made sure their sons didn't fight. That’s not the worst kind of intrusion into privacy?

With this latest intelligence gathering story, the real intrusion on privacy would be if content were being mined which it isn't. And a much greater threat to individuals is when violent response, most of it inappropriate, fosters more hatred and more terrorism. When the superwealthy and giant corporations get away with not contributing adequately to society. When wages are too low so profits can be high and shareholders and CEOs can make a fortune. When a Republican governor squanders $24 million to further his personal agenda and says he didn't know what it cost and he didn't care. Shortly after he had cut $10 million from after-care programs in poor schools, $12 million from hospital charity, and refused to spend $25 million on early voting.

In comparison to the alternatives, intelligence gathering is a peaceful and non-violent method of dealing with the terrorist threat. It would be great if there was no threat. But there is one and something has to be done. The question is simply, who’s going to pay for the security? The people who receive it, or those who don't?

Governor Chris Christie Defending Democracy, No Matter What the Cost

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found himself caught between a rock and hard place recently, on the death of Senator Lautenberg, a liberal who served as a senator from 1982 to 2013 barring a two year break from 2001 to 2003. 

Frank Lautenberg was a real man of the people; gutsy and principled, he made an enemy of Richard Nixon in 1972 when he donated $90,000 to George McGovern’s campaign for president. He fought for his seat against some pretty powerful people, and often came in from behind to win. He was pro-choice, pro-environment, in favor of gun control, same –sex marriage. He played a big part in raising the minimum drinking age and banning smoking on planes. He was one of those politicians who loved his job and who wasn’t in it for power. 

When he died, Christie had to choose between filling the seat with someone of his own choice, or calling a special election a few months ahead of the national gubanatorial elections.

Most opinion seems to agree that Christie has his sights on being the Republican nominee for president and that his strongest argument will be that he was elected and re-elected governor in a blue state. He’ll be running against Democrat Barbara Buono who currently doesn’t appear to have much of a chance against him. He’s a popular guy.

But if he nominated a senator now, New Jersey voters would be voting for a Senator in November. So Cory Booker, a Democrat, would then be on the same ballot as Christie. And he’s a very popular guy too, but with Democrats, who are likely to come out in droves to vote for him. And then also vote for Buono. In a state that is a Democratic stronghold that’s a big risk for Christie and clearly he decided not to take it. Whether it was his primary motivation for choosing a re-election for the Senate seat before the November gubanatorial elections or not is hard to say.

What is clear is that his choice cost the taxpayer in the region of $24 million. He didn’t help his case when he snapped at a reporter accusing him of wasting taxpayers’ money “I don't know what the cost is and I frankly don’t care".  

This from a Republican who, just over a week before, had vetoed a proposal to establish early voting - and he knew what that cost was. It was $25 million. He also cut $8.6 million from college subsidies, $12 million from hospital charity care and $10 million from children’s after-school programs in poor areas. It’s hard to understand how he could have rationalized that as caring about the electorate. 

He, however, insists that all he cares about now is that New Jersey voters get to choose who they want for senator as quickly as possible, and that he will not allow party politics to override democracy.

That may be his primary motivation. It’s impossible to say. But actions have a way of speaking  louder than words. He also said that you can’t put a price on democracy. But you can put a price on a poor person’s health and education and child care. 

As to winning the Republican presidential nomination, would he give up on his values and shift with the wind like Mitt did? Time will tell. 

Right now he’s governor and has the right to do what he did. He still has to nominate somebody for the Senate seat until October. So far he’s been mum on that.