The stuff is hitting the fan too fast for me, but here are tonight’s developments, each of which might have occasioned a week’s worth of coverage in that alternative world we lived in only a year ago.
Steve Bannon called the editor of the liberal American Prospect and talked like he is really the President of the United States. Twitter tells me the site is down, but I have a page up in my tabs, so if you can’t reach it, say so in the comments, and I’ll quote more.
“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”
Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”
Trump Lawyer Forwards Email Echoing Secessionist Rhetoric
The email forwarded by John Dowd, who is leading the president’s legal team, painted the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in glowing terms and equated the South’s rebellion to that of the American Revolution against England. Its subject line — “The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville” — was a reference to comments Mr. Trump made earlier this week in the aftermath of protests in the Virginia college town.
“You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington,” the email reads, “there literally is no difference between the two men.”
And, finally for me, although you may have found other insanities out there,
Phoenix mayor asks Pres. Trump to delay rally there next week “as our nation is still healing” after Charlottesville https://t.co/P6RfUSGexY pic.twitter.com/7XbMbjU05y
— ABC News (@ABC) August 17, 2017