Beto December 11, 2018December 10, 2018 Paul Grossinger: “Who would I talk to affiliated with Beto O’Rourke about being a major donor if he chooses to run in 2020 and hosting/cohosting fundraising events on his behalf?” ☞ Major donor is limited to $2,700 in the primary, so no need to talk to anyone – just contribute if he runs. If he does, he’ll appoint a finance director (and a finance chair) – that’s whom you’d then contact. That said, I’m hoping we Dems will spend most of our money to beat Republicans, not Democrats. So for sure we should support the one or two primary candidates we like best — absolutely. But the big financial effort until we have a nominee should be in building an organization to HAND that nominee so he or she can win the general election. By way of analogy: I heard Democrats spent more than $70 million on TV ads fighting over the nomination for Florida governor this cycle. Interestingly, Andrew Gillum, who won that contest, spent almost nothing on TV compared to the others. Which suggests to me that it’s organizing, more than advertising, that wins races . . . . . . and leads me to wonder whether Gillum, who came within a hair’s breadth of winning, might have won had perhaps half those $70+ million Democratic dollars spent fighting over the primary on TV been spent, instead, on building an even larger ground game with more organizers to register and turn out voters this past November. Full speed ahead on your passion to get involved. So much is at stake.
Leadership For A Blue Dot December 9, 2018 This report describes our vulnerability to an Electromagnetic Pulse attack. (Thanks, Michael.) This one and this one on climate change are equally grim. (Thanks, Anna.) I guess they could lead one to just not try . . . to “eat, live, and be merry.” But perhaps the better take-away is: it’s time to get serious about tackling the species’ existential crises and finding ways to get along with each other on this fragile blue dot. One thing that would help: restoring respect for American leadership — and then leading . . . as we did with the Iran Nuclear agreement and the Paris Climate Accord and the TransPacific Partnership. This weekend, Michelle Obama finished recounting for me the story of her life. Remember when honor, dignity, reason, humility, and compassion defined the White House? An administration fully staffed with top-quality people committed to making the world safer, fairer, and more sustainable? (A Nobel-prize winning physicist heading the Energy Department, for example, instead of the guy who forgot it was one of the three departments he wanted to abolish?) Mike Bloomberg and Kamala Harris, anyone? Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke? Amy Klobuchar and Admiral McRaven? Sherrod Brown and Stacey Abrams? And the conversation continues. As I noted in a post last month, Carl writes me almost every day. I thought that airing a little of our back-and-forth here publicly might encourage him to open his mind or raise his game. It did not. In response to Tuesday’s Wyoming v. California post, suggesting practical ways America might move toward majority rule, Carl cut and pasted this snippet . . . “On November 6, 1860, voters went to the ballot box to cast their vote for President of the United States. Lincoln won the election in an electoral college landslide with 180 electoral votes, although he secured less than 40 percent of the popular vote.” . . . and went on to chide: “Really! I think you should rethink your blogs. Or at least present both sides!” What Carl seemed not to have taken 30 seconds to find out about the 1860 election is that that Lincoln was running against three other candidates, not one; and that he got the most votes of any of them by a wide margin. Even if he hadn’t — even if he had won the presidency with fewer votes than his leading opponent — how would that have made a good case in 2018 against handing the presidency to the candidate with the most votes (like Gore or Clinton) instead of the one with fewer, like Bush 43 or Trump? I don’t believe in presenting both sides on issues that have only one reasonable side. I am not going to say, “here’s why smoking may not be harmful to your health” or “here’s why the climate crisis may be a hoax perpetrated by the scientific community” or “here’s why we should reduce the estate tax on billionheirs” or “here’s why voter suppression is a good thing,” or “here’s why states should not accept Medicaid expansion” or “here’s why Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin may be more trustworthy than Robert Mueller and the Intelligence Community” or “here’s why it may be true that more people turned out on the mall to cheer Trump’s Inauguration than turned out for Obama.” Just not gonna do it.
New York Meets North Dakota December 6, 2018December 5, 2018 Today’s post is more along the lines of “the conversation” — how do we get people of differing views to love each other (like George H. W. Bush and Maureen Dowd!). But first, I wouldn’t mind being the guy who saved your life, or the life of a loved one, someday, so I offer LifeVac (thanks, Brian!), in which I have no personal interest, except that I just bought more than one of them on Amazon. (What if three people are choking at the same time? Or you are fortunate enough to have a second home? Or a relative who already has a cashmere scarf and probably doesn’t have this?) My personal dread has always been that, in trying to suck every last bit of avocado from the pit — waste not, want not! — I will one day swallow that slippery pit and it will get stuck in my throat — my goal of immortality not just foiled but mocked by an avocado pit. Not any more. I’ll just LifeVac it out and go back to my salad. Okay. In case you missed it, here is Jon Meacham’s wonderful eulogy to George H. W. Bush. Don’t miss it. Bush was not my favorite president — and he was awful on AIDS, though I think more out of cluelessness than malice — but . . . well, listen to Meacham. You can stop there. But I’ve been saving this note from Daisy Prince for several weeks now — she sent it a week before the election — and it speaks to how red America and blue America really could be just America again, if there weren’t so much profit and political gain to be had driving us apart. (And Russia working to set us against each other and build distrust.) Anyway, here is her “North Dakota Diary” about her trip from New York to canvass for Heidi Heitkamp. On the Road for Heidi Heitkamp. After I read it, I asked, “What did they think of a New Yorker coming to visit? No resistance to ‘elitists’? I’ve always assumed it’s way better to save the airfare and organize LOCALS to canvass their neighbors? How much did ‘New York’ come up?” Daisy replied: “The North Dakotans were pleased — if puzzled — as to why I was there. They are pretty stoic people and I don’t think get shocked easily. They seemed to understand that it was an important time nationally. New York came up a bit but mostly they were, like many of us, psyched to talk about themselves, North Dakota, and what matters to them. It was really good fun. And such a tonic for the soul. I hope Heidi wins [she did not] but more than that, it’s good to know that we can get through this period of vitriol and hate because underneath we are basically good. I saw that firsthand.”
Feeling In A Prosthetic Hand December 5, 2018December 4, 2018 But first . . . The Apple Boys is a $15 off-off-Broadway hidden treat: talent, humor, singing, and turn-of-the-Century New York fun. Reminds me vaguely of the silliness of Nunsense, which played for 25 years, but without the nuns. Or the intermission. Little more than an hour and you’re off to dinner. WheelTug and Viva Aerobus Sign Slot Reservation. BOREF shareholders: eight new airlines signed up in 2018. The saga continues. As does “The Conversation.” See how Sarah Silverman reaches across the aisle. Finally, as promised in the headline, we’re making astounding technological progress — feeling in a prosthetic limb! But, sadly, as noted in this op-ed, we’re not winning.
Wyoming v. California December 4, 2018December 2, 2018 I think we can all agree that a Wyomingite should have 65 times more Senate representation per capita than a Californian — it’s in the Constitution and that’s not going to change. We are not a majority rule country. Ask Gore. Ask Clinton. But just as the National Popular Vote initiative is a practical workaround to the Electoral College problem (see where it stands in each state) — and ditching the Hastert Rule would help in the House — so esteemed reader Jim Burt may have come up with a practical workaround to edge us at least a little closer to majority rule in the Senate. Right now, senators representing just 15% of the country can keep a bill from coming to the Senate floor. (Realistically, it would be higher because not all low-population states are politically aligned; but mathematically, it’s 15%.) Sixty votes are required for “cloture.” That’s not in the Constitution, it’s just the current Senate rule. The Senate can change it. What if instead of requiring 60 votes, Jim asks, cloture could be invoked by senators representing 60% of the U.S. population? Or, for that matter, 50%? Wyomingites and Alaskans would still have vastly more power per capita than Californians and New Yorkers when a bill came to the Senate floor for a vote. But at least that extra power would not be amplified by the filibuster. “Of course,” Jim writes, “if Democrats imposed this rules change after taking control of the Senate, the Republicans would just eliminate it when they regained a majority. The key point in that case would be to ballyhoo yet another instance of the Republicans striking down majority rule. This would be a small gain, but it might set a precedent in favor of majority rule, and doesn’t even require a presidential signature – just a Senate majority, which we can hope to see for Democrats in 2021.” What do you think? By the way? Kavanaugh was nominated by a president elected with 46% of the popular vote and confirmed by Senators representing 44% of the country. Speaking of which . . . President Obama was elected and re-elected with well over 50% of the vote. In preventing him from filling Anthony Kennedy’s seat, Republicans cited “the Biden rule.” But did you know they were taking Biden’s remarks out of context? That Biden said he would support a moderate end-of-term nomination? Click here for the full story, halfway down: “Fact-Checking the Biden Rule.” REMINDERS: Don’t miss the BAG MAN podcast. Don’t miss THE KOMINSKY METHOD.
What Do You Do When No One Cares? December 3, 2018December 2, 2018 Oh, to have such a president now: honorable, brave, experienced, thoughtful, modest, compassionate. R.I.P., G.H.W.B. The sixth of seven Bag Man podcasts dropped last week and I’m telling you: you must listen to this series. The final line of Episode Six will knock your socks off for its relevance to today. But don’t cheat: start at the beginning, with Episode One. What do you do when there’s a criminal in the White House (the Vice President) who is vehemently denying all the allegations (though true) and attacking the press and the prosecutors for conducting “a witch hunt?” What do you do when that criminal might very well become President, because the actual President at the time — Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon — was also in jeopardy of removal? Nixon, it turns out, was guilty of treason, in President Johnson’s view, that ultimately cost 20,000 American lives (see the final two minutes of this clip). And that’s not even what he was impeached for. Oh — and here’s another question: What do you do when there’s a criminal in the White House and the majority of the Senate, though representing a minority of the citizenry, just doesn’t care? The answer to that one I hope we never have to find out. I hope they will care. That if called upon to weigh the truthfulness of Trump against the truthfulness of Mueller, the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, they will be objective. To help them, my friend David Durst offers this by way of context: “How amazing to see Trump continue to attack Mueller as unethical, untrustworthy, conflicted and a coward. Here is a comparison of the two: Donald J Trump: Skirted military service due to a bone spur. Robert Mueller: Bronze Star with Valor, Purple Heart, Navy Commendation Medal (with Valor), Combat Action Ribbon, South Vietnam Gallantry Cross. Appointed US Attorney by Ronald Reagan; Assistant Attorney General by George H. W. Bush; FBI Director by George W. Bush. Registered Republican.”
So Many Men, So Little Time November 29, 2018November 29, 2018 Here are five: Mike Birbiglia, Friedrich Trump; Al Lowenstein; Anthony Scaramucci; Sandy Kominsky. (Women? Tina Brown has launched a great new podcast. Trans? Tina Brown’s first episode is an interview with Jill Soloway, whose psychiatrist dad became her second mom a few years ago, so she wrote Transparent — get it? trans parent? — and not that long ago decided that she, too, fell under the trans umbrella.) Mike Birbiglia. I think I told you about his Broadway Show, The New One. If I didn’t, I may have been worried you’d find it anti-baby. But it’s not — as Mike explains in this coming Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Which is separate from the Times’ review (“Genius. Sublime.”) Full disclosure: I have a tiny piece of this one. Friedrich Trump. No, not Fred, arrested at a Klan rally in 1927. Friedrich, Fred’s dad. Did you see? Banished from Germany for failing to do his military service. (Supply your own bone-spur snark here: ___________________.) If only Prince Luitpold had let him stay. Allard K. Lowenstein. The one-term Congressman who led the “Dump Johnson” movement that helped end the Vietnam War — William F. Buckley, Jr.’s favorite “Firing Line” sparring partner — eulogized by both Buckley and Ted Kennedy after he was murdered by a deranged acolyte — Mississippi freedom fighter — friend of Eleanor Roosevelt . . . Al once asked me, when I was 22 or so, “what are you doing about South Africa?” Come again? I was nonplussed. What on earth would I be doing about South Africa? I was still furnishing my first apartment with cardboard furniture. But it was a question that’s stuck with me, as you can see, and that applies, of course, as I came to realize, not only to South Africa, but to any circumstance of suffering and injustice. Indeed, it was in South Africa that Al helped write Bobby Kennedy’s “Ripple of Hope” speech. Here is the two-minute lead-in. It unaccountably leaves off just before the part you know: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” A few years later, still in the early Seventies when no one — including me! — was brave enough to put his real name on a book I wrote, Al put his real name on it, providing its only blurb. (” . . . Remarkably honest.”) One of Al’s campaign posters hangs in my office and when young candidates come by, I make a point of telling them who he was. Here is a 1983 documentary of his life: CITIZEN. (And/or the eulogy above.) I offer all this in part simply because I just rediscovered the link to that documentary and wanted to share it. But also to remind myself and anyone who will listen of a time when we had serious champions of justice and intellectual rigor, like Al Lowenstein and William F. Buckley, Jr., Ted Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy and — oh, wait! — Dwight Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale and George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and so many more. I don’t see the same qualities in Donald Trump or his associates; or in those he stumps for, like Judge Roy Moore and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Anthony Scaramucci. From a friend in response to Monday’s post: “Scaramucci was at Neuberger Berman when I worked with him. He was a compliance department nightmare. A self-promoting scam artist. He has just enough charm to obscure just how awful a person he is. He’s not stupid, but he is not as smart as he thinks he is. He will do whatever it takes to promote himself and his own interests.” Sandy Kominsky. You need to watch the pilot of The Kominsky Method on Netflix. I’m pretty sure you will then binge on the subsequent episodes the rest of the weekend. Charles and Michael Douglas shared the same oncologist for the same problem — one day, as we were waiting to go in, Michael Douglas was coming out. Sometimes — witness this amazing show — oncology works. Enjoy! Have a great long weekend! (I’m declaring Friday a possible holiday.)
What Do You Do When No One Cares? November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 The sixth of seven Bag Man podcasts dropped yesterday and I’m telling you: you must listen to this series. Some of my young friends don’t even know who Spiro Agnew was; others, like me, had no idea how dramatic the real, full story was. Until now. What do you do when there’s a criminal in the White House (the Vice President) who is vehemently denying all the allegations (though true) and attacking the press and the prosecutors for conducting a witch hunt? And what do you do when that criminal might very well become President, because the actual President at the time — Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon — was also in serious jeopardy of being removed from office? Nixon, it turns out, was guilty of treason, in President Johnson’s view, that ultimately cost 20,000 American lives (all of which you can preview in the final two minutes of this clip). And that’s not even the Watergate affair and cover up he was impeached for! Oh — and here’s another question: what do you do when there’s a criminal in the White House and the majority of the Senate, though representing a minority of the citizenry,* just doesn’t care? The answer to that one I hope we never have to find out. At some point soon, if it turns out the honesty of the President has to be weighed against the honesty of Robert Mueller, the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, I hope Republican Senators will — however reluctantly — give more weight to the latter. The final line of Episode Six of Bag Man will knock your socks off for its relevance to today. But don’t cheat: start at the beginning, with Episode One. *Need I remind you that Idaho and Wyoming have as many senators as California and New York?
Divesting Fossil Fuel; Counting Votes November 27, 2018November 26, 2018 Anna Haynes: “I searched your site for ‘divest’ ‘fossil’ and nothing came up. What advice do you have for doing low-effort management of an IRA, to still have mostly index funds but not fossil fuels? How to (easily) find reputable well-chosen index funds that are at least low in fossil-fuel-related stocks?” ☞ You are wonderful to ask and to care. My view is that your owning fossil fuel stocks will not help the fossil fuel industry in any way, nor impede the transition to renewables. So I’d suggest redirecting this effort to: . . . finding yet more ways to conserve energy . . . inspiring friends to install solar or to eat less meat . . . organizing to elect Senators and Presidents who “believe in” climate change — all that. To the tiny extent your index fund may enrich you through its ownership of Exxon, I recommend psychological judo: . . . enjoy knowing that you’ll use those Exxon profits to work toward a fossil-free world. Tony Kenck: “I appreciate the sentiment that our current voting systems are flawed and lead to poor results sometimes. I need to disagree with your position from last week that ranked choice voting is the solution. “Ranked Choice (RC) and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) are technically different things. RC is a way of expressing preference, IRV is a method of tabulating votes from RC ballots. “This is an important distinction. IRV, which seems pretty good, can solve one problem (e.g. Gore Bush) but introduce others. Technically speaking, IRV is nonmonotonic. That is, a shift of public opinion toward a candidate can cause the candidate to lose, and a shift of public opinion away from a candidate can cause the candidate to win. IRV also has significant issues with tabulation. Late votes require the entire set of votes to be retabulated because it could change the last-place vote. Technically, you can not know the results until every single vote is in and calculated. . . . A different and probably superior method is one called Condorcet. It eliminates most of the IRV issues, but introduces a few other, but less likely, issues. The tabulation is more straightforward than with IRV. IRV is to Condorcet as single elimination is to round robin. . . . Superior to both of them is Approval voting, in which you simply select all candidates that would be acceptable to you. It’s simple to tabulate and does not have the issues of either IRV or Condorcet. IT’s not perfect, but is an improvement over the current systems, IRC and Condorcet. And it is very simple. It is not technically a ranked choice input though. . . . This website has wonderful graphics of how these different systems can work or not depending on the positions of the candidates. The author of the site is Ka-Ping Yee. . . . I have no problem stirring the pot to improve our election systems, but we need to be careful not to settle too quickly on a solution that will prove flawed. . . . I’m not a lone voice in the universe on this either — e.g, this editorial by Ari Armstrong in the Colorado Sun.” Bonus round: Did you see Nick Kristof’s wonderful column on immigration?
Anybody Have The Mooch’s Email? November 26, 2018November 24, 2018 My friend Tym wants to send him a note, but doesn’t have his address: Dear Mr. Scaramucci, My name is Artyom Matusov, and I attended the SplinterNews viewing of your documentary Monday night in Manhattan, where you appeared afterward for a discussion with Hamilton Nolan (I was sitting near the front, wearing a black leather jacket and red sweatpants, across the aisle from the older gentleman who asked you the last question about whether you believe Trump is a fascist). Firstly, I would like to thank you for participating in the documentary and for being willing to come and be interviewed about it with someone who very clearly doesn’t like you very much, in front of a small, hostile audience. That takes strength, intelligence, charm and courage, all qualities which you clearly possess. Speaking for myself, I decided to attend your viewing primarily out of curiosity, to get a better sense of a person who helped put Trump into office and keep him there. I am a gay, Jewish immigrant from Moscow, Russia. I came to America, legally, with my parents in 1988 when I was four. Both of my parents were only 28 years old when they started their new life in the United States, possessing little else than their wits, and left the Soviet Union because of its rampant antisemitism, and because they were political dissidents (in 1987 my father, who came from a prominent Soviet family, was arrested in front of the Soviet Defense Ministry and interrogated by the KGB for publicly protesting the Soviet war in Afghanistan; you can imagine our current state of déjà vu). I do not exaggerate at all when I say that as a Russian-American Jew, I have been hearing my entire life about the various horrors of fascism, communism and totalitarianism (this is almost all my parents and grandparents talk about when we are all together). Their stories and warnings always seemed distant and irrelevant to my life here, but I listened out of respect, and because I had no choice, even though the thoughts these stories evoke are not always very pleasant, and I don’t particularly enjoy having them. Unfortunately, I do not believe they are irrelevant anymore. A few weeks ago, a large band of neo-Nazis called the Proud Boys collected as a mob not far from where I live in Manhattan, engaged in mob violence where they physically assaulted multiple people, were caught on camera yelling things like “faggot” and “I think I just punched a foreigner,” and most shockingly of all, the NYPD was fully aware and present during the entire incident, and instead of stopping it, or arresting any of the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, instead chose to arrest three people who the Proud Boys had beaten up. Not long after, another ardent Trump-supporting neo-Nazi in Florida sent pipe bombs from his Trump-plastered van to a large number of Democratic leaders, while yet another murdered 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the neighborhood where my own family members had lived several years earlier. The inspiration for his mass murder came from Trump, who claimed that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was somehow responsible for the fact that Latin American refugees seek asylum in the United States. Although I cannot speak for HIAS’ activities in Latin America, it did most definitely help me and my family escape from the totalitarian Soviet Union and relocate safely to the United States, where we have all prospered and contributed to our adopted homeland. So with all of that said, here is my reaction to your performance: On a personal level, I liked you a lot, despite your many flaws and contradictions, and despite not wanting to like you at all. I think that is primarily a testament to your charm, intelligence, and candor, though I also think you are dishonest in many ways, as we all are in our own special ways, both with others, and with ourselves. Having thus been charmed by you, against my will, I am now disappointed in you. I am disappointed by the fact that you acknowledge Trump’s words and actions hurt and harm many different kinds of people, and that Brett Kavanaugh is at best, most probably a horrible pig and liar, yet you then choose to deny that these things are significant, central in fact to the Trump Presidency, and that they are significantly hurting the country, and specifically people like me (and women, and African Americans, and Hispanics, and Muslims). That despite this, you still choose to support Trump, because you think it is in your financial or political interest, which I can assure you it is not. My purpose in saying this is not to insult you, but just look at how your association with him has damaged your life already. It blew-up your businesses, almost blew-up your marriage, and put a major dent in your political ambitions, whatever those might now be. And your story is not unique. Most people who associate closely with the Trump family end up badly burned. These are facts, not my opinions. Here is another fact. I am part of the majority now, the majority in this country that is being attacked by a vicious, vengeful and bitter minority of mostly outrageous white straight Christian nativist men. I do not think this is who you are. But as a white straight rich Christian man born here, and as a Harvard trained lawyer, I think you know better than to think that you can tell someone like me that Trump is not a xenophobe or an anti-Semite, or a homophobe (or a racist). As someone who is not directly affected by these words, you do not get to participate in their definition. You do not get to tell people that Trump is not a racist. Nor do you get to use Van Jones’ support for criminal justice reform as proof of anything other than the need for criminal justice reform. My plea to you is to please reconsider what you are doing. Stop selling your book, which says that Trump is some blue-collar hero, when he is actually he a vicious scam artist, who has hurt you many times already. Reflect on your attempt to re-ingratiate yourself with Republicans. It will fail. Step back, breathe, be grateful that you still have all the things that you have, and imagine how you can make a genuine positive impact in the world that has nothing to do with ego, money or power. Please. Tym’s letter got me thinking about my few Trump supporter friends. They floor me. If I called one of them a liar, I think he’d flush very red — and lash back. It’s a terrible thing to be branded a liar. No? Yet somehow they’ve decided it’s funny — or at worst okay — that Trump is a liar. And a tax cheat. And a con man. And a sociopath who kept Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. Okay that Trump insists he doesn’t know Matt Whitaker while insisting he knows him well. Okay that — with months to pick Sessions’ replacement — Trump chose Whitaker to head the Justice Department. Maybe if the Roberts seat ever opens up, Trump will appoint Whitaker Chief Justice! He has a law degree, after all. (I’d say, “what more do you need?” but in truth, you didn’t even need that.) And he may not be indicted for his role in the World Patent Marketing fraud. “Oh, now you’re being ridiculous,” I can hear my Trump-supporting friends say. But am I? If it’s ridiculous to think Whitaker could be Chief Justice, why is it not ridiculous that he’s Attorney General? Anyway . . . UPDATE! THE MOOCH GOT TYM’S LETTER! Before I append his reply, just a little housekeeping on the “sociopath” thing. There are lots of “Trump sociopath” Google hits to choose from, and over the last few months I’ve linked to several. Brooks Hilliard: “Calling Trump a sociopath is exactly what Cong. Crenshaw, whom you extolled, suggested (sensibly) that we not do. I think we should be stating (provably) that Trump is a liar and a cheat (also provable: Trump U, stiffing subs, etc.). His opinions and policies are misguided and dangerous. But we should all stay away from name-calling, which runs the risk of diminishing us more than him (Michelle Obama may have said this best).” Paul deLespinasse: “The ’10 characteristics of a psychopath’ you linked to is truly frightening. However, I discovered that Mike Adams, the author, is a far-out inoculation-opposing conspiracy-theorist who was a birther and supported Trump’s election.” ☞ Well, okay. Then how about this link? ” . . . [sociopaths are] characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, unchecked egocentricity, and the ability to lie in order to achieve one’s goals . . .” Or this one? Anything there that strikes you as Trumpian? The Mooch responds: From: Scaramucci, Anthony Date: Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 8:58 PM Subject: Re: Feedback on Monday’s Hamilton Nolan interview To: Artyom Matusov Very well written and I appreciate the time that you took to write it. Thank you for your honest appraisal. It is hard to know the truth through the distortion of the media and it’s self forming narratives. All things trump are bad. I got that. However it just isn’t true. He has governed pretty to very moderately. As for me I have absolutely no political ambition. I was trying to help the country and made a mistake on the phone with a reporter. Nothing more or less. John Kelly took advantage of it. It has come back to hurt him now. I am focused on my family and my business. I thought the other night was odd. I came to answer questions about the film not to be attacked. I thought the crowd was very close minded and just wanted a punching bag rather than meet in the middle. I appreciate you coming and making the decision to hear me out. The fact that you may not like me now, my opinions or philosophy has at least been confirmed by your own due diligence and not media biases. As for the book I encourage you to read it. It too may not be what you think. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, Anthony Whatever you think of Scaramucci — and however delusional his claim that Trump has governed moderately — it’s hard not to enjoy the trailer.