Biden's first Presidential press conference

Joe Biden gave his first Presidential press conference yesterday, Joe Biden's first press conference as US President DW News 03/25/. (Biden enters the video just after.6:50.)

One "boring" improvement from the new Administration is making the official White House website a useful information source again. So the transcript of the press conference is available there, Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference 03/25/2021.

In the Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden Administrations, the White House website regularly provided transcripts of Presidential speeches and press conferences. Obama had a weekly video message that was posted there. Under Trump-Pence, it deteriorated fast. It had spotty information, and that crowd were such dishonest clowns, I wouldn't have even taken official transcripts as accurate. So this little bit of "normalcy" under the current administration is a welcome bit of boring but useful improvement. Although I haven't seen any videos popping up there yet, which strikes me as a bit odd.

Biden's press conference itself was "normal," rather than the theatrical Rumpelstilzchen shows that Trump put on in his press conferences and Nuremburg rallies. But he provided useful information and I would say good framing for his policies. I'm on a trust-but-verify basis with Biden's Presidency. And on some issues like immigration, it's more like don't -really-trust-but-demnad-they-do-the-right-thing-anyway basis.

Left-leaning media critics let out a collective sigh about how the press is also more-or-less back to pre-Trump "normal", i.e., they still obsess over horserace question (Are you going to run for re-elction in 2024?, Do you have the votes to do away with the filibuster?) and they still take their cues from Republican framing (Are more refugees coming because they think you're weak on immigration?)

Dan Froomkin analyses the press' performance in At Biden’s first news conference, it wasn’t the president who was out of touch Press Watch 03/258/2021:

There were no questions about any element of the Covid crisis – not the vaccine, the prognosis, the economy, nothing! – although it’s by far the most important issue on any normal person’s mind right now. There were no questions about the substance of Biden’s ambitious plans related to infrastructure and climate change, immigration and voting rights.

And he also notes, "after four years of the media desperately needing to fact-check the president (and often failing), now the president has to fact-check the media."

I won't add any theater-criticism type comments on the press conference. That's why we have our Pod Pundits on TV ...

Immigration was a mjor topic in the debate, not least because the Republicans have been beating their drums over it. They claim there is a "crisis" on the border because there's a new flood of refugees due to Biden being President. There is a real humantarian crisis on the border, and Biden emphasized that in his press conference. But as he also explained, the "crisis" the Republicans are yammering about is bogus, for reasons he explained well.

Mehdi Hasan addresses the immigration issue in this segment, Myth-Busting What's Behind the Situation at the Border The Mehdi Hasan Show 03/26/2021

It features Erika Andiola Advocacy Chief for RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services). Good discussion on how the press is still using Republican/xenophobic framing of the border issue.

Despite the somewhat ditsy questioning, Biden also talked about the necessity of getting important legislation passed, changing the filibuster rule if necessary. And he made it sound necessary.

And he did talk about the COVID relief bill and some about his plans for a new stimulus/infrastructure bill. Very importantly, he strssed the benefits that ordinary Americans are going to get from the relief bill.

I do think that Biden needs to move faster on cleaning up the mess in the immigration system that was left immediately by the Trump-Pence Administration. But the legacy from the Obama-Biden Administration in that regard was bad in many ways.

I've followed immigration policy to some extent my whole adult life. So it's unsurprising that the US has lurched alone with such a bad system with Latin American immigration for so long. But it's still terrible that it has, because it's heavily based on shameless exploitation of immigrant workers.

The last substantive US immigration reform was during the Bush I Administration. In a short book I think is terribly underrated, The Culture of Contentment (1992), John Kenneth Galbraith included a chapter called "The Functional Underclass," in which he discussed the US economy's dependene on what he called a low-paid underclass, which he described this way:

What is not accepted, and indeed is little mentioned, is that the underclass is integrally a part of a larger economic process and, more importantly, that it serves the living standard and the comfort of the more favored community. Economic progress would be far more uncertain and certainly far less rapid without it. The economically fortunate, not excluding those who speak with greatest regret of the existence of this class, are heavily dependent on its presence.

Even in 1992, this was not a "respectable" way to talk about the economy. But Galbraith was usually more focused on getting it right than in pandering to fashionable respectable opinion at any given moment.

And he described how Latin America was providing a considerable part of that "underclass" at the time:

In more recent times, migration from Mexico, Latin America and the West Indies has become a general source of such labor. For many years now, legal provision has been made for the importation of workers for the harvesting of fruit and vegetables, there being very specific acknowledgment that this is something native-born Americans cannot be persuaded in the necessary numbers to do. There is here, somewhat exceptionally, a clear legal perception of the role of the underclass.

In the immigration legislation of 1990, there was at last some official recognition of the more general and continuing need for immigrant labor. Although much of the discussion of this measure turned on the opening of the door to needed skilled workers (and compassionately to relatives of earlier migrants), the larger purpose was not in doubt. There would be a new and necessary recruitment of men and women to do the tasks of the underclass. Avoided only was mention of such seemingly brutal truth. It is not thought appropriate to say that the modern economy - the market system - requires such an underclass, and certainly not that it must reach out to other countries to sustain and refresh it. [my emphasis]

The dependence on undocumented immigrant labor in the US economy has increased greatly since then. But the refugee issue is a distinct one, although it is a closely related issue. Refugees are fleeing intolerable conditions, though if they are coming to the US, they normally hope to be able to make a living there.

One of the things that American and European xenophobes like to claim is that a decent policy on refugees - and only policies that meet the minimal standards of internal law should even be considered as fitting into that category - will encourage even more immigration. In both the US and Europe, this is meant to convey images of hordes of dark-skinned foreigners from poor countries coming in to take advantage of institutions created by respectable, hard-working white folks. But it's at least 99% a bogus argument. and Biden did a good job of explaining that in the context of the moment in his press conference.

Cecilia Vega of ABC News posed this question:

Q I’d like to circle back to immigration, please. You just listed the reasons that people are coming, talking about in-country problems, saying that it happens every year; you blamed the last administration. Sir, I just got back last night from a reporting trip to the border where I met nine-year-old, Yossell, who walked here from Honduras by himself, along with anoth

er little boy. He had that phone number on him — THE PRESIDENT: Astounding.

Q — and we were able to call his family. His mother says that she sent her son to this country because she believes that you are not deporting unaccompanied minors like her son. That’s why she sent him alone from Honduras.

So, sir, you blamed the last administration, but is your messaging — in saying that these children are and will be allowed to stay in this country and work their way through this process — encouraging families like Yossell says to come?

And Biden addressed the propaganda claim the Republicans are making in his reply:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, the idea that I’m going to say — which I would never do — “if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let him starve to death and stay on the other side” — no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.

That’s why I’ve asked the Vice President of the United States, yesterday, to be the lead person on dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the first place. It’s because of earthquakes, floods. It’s because of lack of food. It’s because of gang violence. It’s because of a whole range of things. ...

That mother did not sit around with — on the kitchen table and say, “You know, I got a great idea: The way I’m going to make sure my son get taken care of is I’m going to put a…” — how old was he, or she?

Q He’s — he’s nine. I also met a 10-year-old.

THE PRESIDENT: A nine-year-old. “I’m going to send him on a thousand-mile journey across the desert and up to the United States because I know Joe Biden is a nice guy and he’ll take care of him.”

What a desperate act to have to take. The circumstances must be horrible. So we can do something about that.

It's good to have a President making that straightforward argument.

Trump's continuing scam, the COVID-19 crisis, and critics' desperate to believe the situation isn't as bad as it looks

Peter Wehner writes, "Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially — if those impressions are at odds with reality." (The President is Trapped The Atlantic ß3/25/2020)

One big mistake the Democrats made in campaigning against Trump in 2016 was to smugly assume that Trump's professional-wrestling style of politicking couldn't win him the Presidency. Wehner continues, "He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman," which he wasn't. Now that he has essentially $4.5 trillion dollars that he can allocate to pretty much any companies he wants including his own, maybe he will finally make his business fabulously successful.

But being a lucky and unscrupulous grifter isn't the same as being the business genius he claimed to be. David Cay Johnston has been telling anyone who would listen for years that Trump was a mobster and a scamster, not a brilliant business titan.

Wehner continues that sentence by saying that Trump's persuasion of "a good chunk of the country" also extended to conning them into thinking that he "knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else."

And Wehner predicts that as the COVID-19 crisis proceeds:

Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures. [my emphasis]

Unfortunately, Wehner's piece reflects a lot of the weaknesses the American commentariat has displayed in dealing with Trump's Malicious Orange Clown Show. He presents Trump's success at selling his con job image of himself as due to Trump's own talent for scamming. Which is part of the story.

But there is a great deal of the story to which Beltway media types don't want to call attention. One of those factors is the corporate media itself. CBS Executive Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonvies described his view of the Trump campaign at a media conference in early 2016 (Paul Bond, Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: "It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS" Hollywood Reporter 02/29/2016):

"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," he said of the presidential race.

Moonves called the campaign for president a "circus" full of "bomb throwing," and he hopes it continues.

"Most of the ads are not about issues. They're sort of like the debates," he said.

"Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun," he said.

"I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going," said Moonves.

"Donald's place in this election is a good thing," he said Monday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco.

"There's a lot of money in the marketplace," the exec said of political advertising so far this presidential season. [my emphasis]

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as corportate media. And their approach to covering politics is radically different from the classical image of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite that many older Democrats still have in their heads as the normalcy that a successful Make America Boring Again campaign this year would restore.

That doesn't diminish Trump's own success in working that system. He's unmistakably a talented demogogue. But Wehner's article also reflects the very narrow and unrealistic framing of NeverTrumper rightwing Republicans and the Democratic "Resistance" types, which portrays Trump as a unique aberration whose departure from the political scene will somehow restore a lost normal state. The Republican fever will break, conservative Democrats keep telling themselves and the public, year after year, and decade after decade.

The media malfunction, which has very much to do with the business laws that frame the media market, won't go away without serious reforms to the legal framework that currently controls matters such as media concentration.

The political environment that made Trumpism and a President Trump possible is one of asymmetric partisan polarization in a system in which essentiall all meaningful limits to spending in political campaigns have been aboloished. (On the latter point, I don't mean to imply it can't get worse!) The campaign financing model in the US is a system of legalized bribery in which even illegal bribery and corruption become much harder to detect, deter, and prosecute.

For Democrats - to the extent that they actually want a healthy representative democracy - it's especially important to stop pretending that Trump is akin to a Thanos or Cthulhu dropping in from space. The criminal and anti-democratic aspects of the Trump Presidency were present and on very prominent display during the Bush-Cheney Administration. And the subsequent Obama-Biden Administration gave Cheney's project to establish an authoritarian Unitary Executive system of government the one thing a Republican Administration could never give itself: immunity from prosecution for criminal activity granted by an administration of the other party.

The "blood on his hands" metaphor

Andrew Lee Butters provides a helpful analysis of how uncritically the phrase "blood on his hands" is tossed around in American politics - when used for Evil Foreign Enemies, of course (A guide to navigating the Trump-Iran story Columbia Journalism Review 01/09/2020):

Killing and, metaphorically speaking, getting blood on their hands, is what soldiers devote their professional lives to. Since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, Iran and the US have been engaged in a proxy cold war, and there has been ample opportunity for Suleimani to get his hands wet. ...

The main American charge against him is that under his command Iran flooded Iraq with powerful explosives capable of penetrating armored vehicles and, when deployed by Iraqi anti-American Shiite militias, killed hundreds and wounded thousands of American soldiers. As a correspondent for Time magazine in Baghdad in 2004, I survived a roadside bombing while traveling in a Humvee with American army engineers through a Shiite neighborhood. It could very well have been the downstream result of a Suleimani operation. (As we were aware then, though it often gets forgotten: Suleimani, and the Islamic Republic, represent the Shia part of the Islamic faith. It is distinct from, and sometimes stands in opposition to, Sunni Islam, from which extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS spring.) [my emphasis]

The point here is that however valid moral issues are - "blood on his hands" - foreign policy and especially decisions about war and peace need to be based on realistic assessments of situations and rational, sensible understandings of national interest - not only of one's own countries' interests, but those of others, as well.

And for professional warmongers - yes, Virginia, there are such people - promoting moralistic propaganda slogans is as normal as breathing.

The [2003] invasion of Iraq [during the Cheney-Bush Administration] is now widely seen as a disaster, resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. But few in the US political and media mainstream would describe former President George W. Bush, who started that war, or the American generals who waged it, as having “blood on their hands.” Nor would it be said of successive American administrations that have collaborated on covert operations in Iraq with the Mojahedin-e Khalq [MEK], a cult-like anti-Islamic Republic terror organization in Iran responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths. [my emphasis]

This is not to say that moral and legal judgments have no place in foreign policy. On the contrary. It's especially important to keep in mind the war is incredibly destructive and kills people who are no more good nor bad than the people doing the killing. People who cynically promote war for profit or personal advantage or promote war as some kind of patriotic sacrament are doing something deeply immoral.

Which is why responsible people keep a good grip on reality when it comes to war. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo are not such responsible people.