Trumpdate (3.28.24):
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Daniel Kahneman's death, Jeffrey Clark invoking the 5th, Ronna McDaniel's NBC contract, Matt Schlapp's accuser being paid, Trump's hush-money judge claim, Joe Lieberman's death, John Eastman's recommended disbarment, critique of a NY Post article on Jon Stewart, US housing prices, restarting a Michigan nuclear plant, shift in American views on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden's healthcare photo controversy, extension of WSJ reporter's detention in Russia, and a court blocking Texas' criminal immigration law.
1.) Daniel Kahneman: Nobel prize-winning behavioral economist dies at 90.
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist renowned for his pioneering work on behavioral economics and decision-making. He is a professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Some key points about Daniel Kahneman:
He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Vernon L. Smith) for his seminal work in prospect theory which challenged the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory.
His empirical findings demonstrated systematic human biases in decision-making under uncertainty, thereby laying the foundations for the field of behavioral economics.
His book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" published in 2011 summarizes decades of his research on the psychology of judgment, decision-making and behavioral economics. It discusses the two modes of thinking - fast and intuitive vs. slow and effortful.
Some of the key concepts he developed include prospect theory, loss aversion, framing effects, anchoring bias and the representativeness heuristic among others.
His work integrated insights from psychology into economic science, making him a key figure in establishing behavioral economics as a influential sub-field in economics.
Kahneman is regarded as one of the most influential psychologists in demonstrating the human irrationality in economic decision-making through groundbreaking empirical research.
2.) NBC: Jeffrey Clark - election denier who Trump wanted to take over DOJ invokes the 5th in disbarment hearing
An environmental lawyer whom Donald Trump wanted to take over the Justice Department in the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a disbarment hearing Wednesday.
Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department civil lawyer with no criminal law experience, had wanted to investigate a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, including via smart thermostats. Just hours before the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump nearly made Clark the acting attorney general but backed off when Justice Department leadership threatened to resign en masse.
Federal authorities searched Clark's home in June 2022, and he now faces criminal charges in Georgia in the state racketeering case against Trump and others. Clark surrendered to authorities in that case in August and pleaded not guilty. He is also unindicted co-conspirator No. 4 in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump.
3.) [UPDATE] More Ronna McDaniel News - The NBC executive, Jack Donaghy, that hired Ronna McDaniel, has been fired. He's a major donor to the RNC.
[UPDATE] per WaPo: “The Washington Post has learned that MSNBC President Rashida Jones participated in recruiting former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel earlier this month and McDaniel was offered a more lucrative contributor contract after she agreed to appear on MSNBC and not just NBC News.”
[UPDATE 2] NBC: McDaniel eyes big payout after NBC drama - (two years at $300,000 annually or $600,000!)
[TS] A contract is a contract…
On a side note: Why is MAGA / right wing media — and people who hate “the media” in general — taking such offense to Ronna getting fired? She gets canned from the RNC and they don’t even bat an eye. NBC dumps her and it’s all “How could they!?” Get your fainting couches ready, folks.
4.) DAILYBEAST: Matt Schlapp’s Accuser Was Paid to Drop Sexual Assault Suit
When conservative icon Matt Schlapp announced Tuesday that the sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against him was dropped, he and his allies were quick to note that the ordeal ended without him or the American Conservative Union—the right-wing organization he runs—paying his accuser a single dollar.
But what Schlapp didn’t disclose was that the Republican operative who sued him was, in fact, paid to drop the lawsuit, according to two people with knowledge of the payout. It was just that the money came from ACU’s insurance company, these two people told The Daily Beast.
(Minutes before this article published, CNN ran a story also revealing that the lawsuit was dropped only after Schlapp’s accuser was paid $480,000 from ACU’s insurer—an amount one of the sources confirmed to The Daily Beast.)
Hours after the news broke on Tuesday, these sources said, Huffman’s counsel notified Schlapp’s legal team that some of Schlapp’s personal statements and social media posts celebrating the lawsuit’s resolution appeared to be in breach of the agreement’s nondisparagement clause. Those posts have since been taken down, including one where Schlapp, citing a Washington Examiner report on his personal Twitter account, wrote that he had been “cleared” of wrongdoing and that Huffman had “apologized.”
5.) [TS] The day after Trump started selling bibles, I thought I’d dust off this gem:
6.) David Shor (Head of Data Science at Blue Rose Research) posts graph on growing support of abortion post Roe v Wade:
In the 35 years after the Roe ruling, the American public settled into a "wishy-washy" equilibrium on abortion where Roe v Wade was popular but most abortion restrictions were also popular.
But the last 12 years have changed the politics on this issue enormously!
Public support in the GSS for "Women should be able to get an abortion for any reason if she wants one" has gone from 42% in 2012 to 57% in 2022!
7.) THESPECTATOR: Trump’s claim about hush-money judge’s daughter appears false.
Donald Trump made a claim of so-called bias in his New York hush-money trial on Wednesday: the daughter of Juan Merchan, the judge assigned to the case, appeared to have an X account with a profile picture depicting Trump behind bars.
There’s only one problem: the account’s veracity is dubious at best, with a creation date of April 2023. Analysis of the Twitter ID associated with the account shows that Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren’s known Twitter account, that she has used since 2016, had its name changed and was set private at some point last spring.
8.) Joe Lieberman, longtime US Senator, has died at 82.
Joe Lieberman was a Senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election, running alongside Al Gore. Lieberman later became an Independent in 2006 and caucused with the Democratic Party while continuing to serve in the Senate until his retirement in 2013.
9.) California judge (Roland) recommends disbarment of pro-Trump attorney John Eastman for his 2020 election fraud claims and the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection.
The Bar found that “The scale and egregiousness of Eastman’s unethical actions far surpasses the misconduct at issue in Segretti.” In short: California State Bar recommends that John Eastman be disbarred.
10.) NY Post has an article claiming Jon Stewart is doing “precisely what he called Trump out for doing (ie fraud) in his Monday monologue.” [TS] This is nonsense.
NY Post says
In 2014, Stewart sold his 6,280-square-foot Tribeca duplex to financier Parag Pande for $17.5 million. The property’s asking price at that time is not available in listing records.
But according to 2013-2014 assessor records obtained by The Post, the property had the estimated market-value at only $1.882 million.
The actual assessor valuation was even lower, at $847,174.
Records also show that Stewart paid significantly lower property taxes, which were calculated based on that assessor valuation price — precisely what he called Trump out for doing in hisMonday monologue.
[TS] Why is this different?
#1 - You don't value your property for tax purposes - the city does
#2 - Jon Stewart paid the assessed taxes on his property and sold his apartment for the market price. There's no analogy - none - between what he did and Trump's inflation of his net worth on loan documents.
What did Trump do?
Falsely inflated his net work to get more favorable loan terms from the banks.
Here’s one example of the inflation (taken from the lawsuit):
Trump Park Ave:
12 rent-stabilized units were appraised in 2010 at $750,000 total
The value listed in on Trump’s financial statements in 2011 and 2012? Those same units were valued at nearly $50,000,000.
11.) Neat little graph of Median US house prices by county, Q4 2023 (via StatisticUrban):
[TS] - Seems simple: BUILD. MORE. HOMES! People keep trying to subsidize demand (cheaper loans! lower rates! cash for 1st time buyers!) - it’s the supply, stupid! ← is that a saying?
12.) AP: Biden administration will lend $1.5B to restart Michigan nuclear power plant, a first in the US.
[TS] We need more of this. Nuclear energy is not the boogeyman people make it out to be.
13.) GALLUP Poll shows Americans have shifted to disapproval of Israeli military action in Gaza:
[TS] There is no question that the events on Oct 7th justified a response, but this polling does not surprise me. I think even before the war began there was some hesitancy by even very pro-Israel voices questioning if a full-on ground invasion was the best move. And I’m not talking politically, but militarily. If any country has amassed a wealth of knowledge about urban warfare within a Middle East country against Islamic terrorists — it’s the US. But, the short answer is: Who knows?
14.) [TS] Biden posted a photo + comment that has drawn the ire of the right
[TS] People like Dan McLaughlin (Senior Writer, National Review) who commented:
Conservatives never need to create straw men. The other side makes it easy.
This belief is almost totally unique to the American right: People whose health care costs more than they can afford should have to go without it.
Dan is right though, this is not a straw man - Democrats really think people should be able to get medical care even if they run out of money and conservatives disagree with this.
15.) NYT: Russia Extends WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich's Detention for a Fifth Time to June 30th.
One year since Evan Gershkovich’s arrest, Russian prosecutors have yet to produce any evidence to back up these “accusations”.