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NYT: Even for This President, It Was a Remarkable Week of Attacks on American Institutions
My comment:
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
WASHINGTON — In the three days after the Democrats captured the House, President Trump fired his attorney general and replaced him with a loyalist critical of both the courts and the Russia investigation. He banned a CNN correspondent from the White House, while threatening he would do the same to other journalists. And he accused election officials in Florida and Arizona of rigging the vote against candidates he had campaigned for.
- Nov. 9, 2018
It was a remarkable assault on the nation’s institutions, even by a president who has gleefully taken a hammer to the press, to judges and prosecutors he does not like, and to an electoral process he has denounced as fraudulent since the day he took office.
...
While each of his actions rattled Washington, Mr. Trump’s appointment of Matthew G. Whitaker as the acting attorney general, replacing the ousted Jeff Sessions, raised the thorniest ethical and legal questions, according to lawyers and former Justice Department officials.
Mr. Whitaker’s radical legal views; public disparagement of the Russia investigation, which he now oversees; connections to a Florida company shut down after fraud allegations; and lack of Senate confirmation each make him a dubious choice to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
...
Even Mr. Trump seemed to recognize the problematic nature of the appointment. On Friday, he told reporters he did not know Mr. Whitaker, the opposite of what he said on a Fox program only a month earlier, and he emphasized that Mr. Whitaker was serving on an acting basis.
My comment:
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism