Breitbart at War

Breibart.com fights like Trump fights.    Counterpunch and make it hurt

Breitbart is the web-based id of the Trump campaign, and now the Trump transition.

Fox News had been the mouthpiece and infomercial for Republicans.  It still plays an important television role, but now it takes second place to Breitbart as the official media voice of Donald Trump.  Some of their anchors began showing a tone of journalistic independence, with moments of pushback on Trump.    Shepard Smith and Megyn Kelly are "on the Fox team" but they are Fox-style-journalists rather than pure and reliable fawning, gushing fans.

Breitbart villain

Breitbart.com is tabloid, old style yellow journalism.  They shock, they accuse, and they are openly partisan.   During the campaign Breitbart was the news-documenter for Trump's talking points on terror, on immigration, on Hillary.   Breitbart carried the Trump message with the patina of independence since they came from a website, not Trump's campaign headquarters.   They represent Trump, but aren't Trump.  

Breitbart.com has heroes and villains.   Breitbart is not careful or judicious; it is interesting and clickable.  Trump is good, Hillary is dishonest, Obama is prejudiced for blacks and against whites, Muslims are likely terrorists, immigrants are crime prone, liberals are snobby hypocrites and fools.  Some of their headlines and stories offend people, which is predictable because the site is intended to be clickable, and their stories to be forwarded around the conservative populist market for outrage.  

This blog has observed that Trump sees politics as public persuasion through big body-language spectacle.  He says big things.  He uses big gestures--most recently taking a call from the elected president of Taiwan, sending a signal to China that they cannot take One China for granted.     Policy wonks who tried in the campaign to discuss issues are misunderstanding Trump's arena.  They came across as weak (Bush) or lacking stamina (Clinton.)   They are bringing a knife to a gun fight, or more specifically, they are bringing a logical argument to a professional wrestling show, or policy white papers to a tabloid news stand.

Trump and Breitbart use each other.

Kellogg decided the site was too controversial, which is not surprising since in fact the site draws millions of viewers because it is intentionally controversial.   Kellogg issued a statement saying they were dropping it as a place to advertise:

     “We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that are not aligned with our values as a company. We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site.”

Breitbart demonstrates how Trump fights back.   Now when internet browsers go to Breitbart they get the following popup:

Trump counterpunches.  Breitbart counterpunches.  Note that Breitbart turns Kellogg's prudence--or circumspection or desire to avoid association with controversy--into an act of disgraceful cowardice, an insult to free speech, and they convert their statement that the site is "not aligned with our values as a company" into a direct insult of the readers, not the site.   Breitbart.com changed Kellogg's statement to read that Kellogg says "its 45 million monthly readers are 'not aligned with our values as a company."

Breitbart turns 180 degrees the consensus point of criticism of them, that they openly and joyfully promote prejudice and xenophobia, into an accusation that Kellogg is the one promoting prejudice and bigotry.   It is the "Swift Boat" technique:  attack the opponent at its point of strength and accuse it of being guilty of your own area of vulnerability ad guilt.   Does this kind of persuasion judo work?   Ask John Kerry, the Navy lieutenant injured under enemy fire who earned purple hearts and a bronze star who was described as a coward in comparison with Governor George Bush who served at the same time in the Alabama Air National Guard.

Steve Bannon

Whether or not Kellogg continues its plan to end its advertising Breitbart has clearly signaled to its current advertisers that there are costs to abandoning Breitbart.   They sent a signal.   Don't cross us, or we will make it hurt.

 Trump sent similar signals during the Republican primary election:  attack me and I will attack you just like I attacked Weak Jeb and Zero Graham and then Little Marco.  It affected the calculations of the various candidates on whom to direct their criticism.  They attacked each other, not Trump.  As each person dropped off Trump was the primary beneficiary.

Critics will observe this is heavy handed, ugly, disproportionate, and dishonest behavior by Breitbart.  There are very legitimate reasons for a breakfast cereal company to want to avoid advertising in openly controversial sites but when they "took sides" that their leaving would hurt them.   It is consistent with the Breitbart method: attack, attribute bad motives in the strongest terms, get clicks, draw an audience, and divide the world into good guys and villains.  This isn't a court of law, with rules of access and fairness and disciplined argument.  It is the internet.  It is tabloid.  It is the current state of the politics that wins 270 electoral votes.

Breitbart's founder now sits at the right hand as the "Chief Strategist" for the President Elect.

Up Close at Harvard

Let me explain what I am doing here.

I came to the Harvard JFK School of Government because I had guessed it would be the epicenter of discussion about the election and what comes next.   It was a happy accident that I was here just in time for the every-four-year meeting of the campaign managers which created the fireworks that are on the news.

I knew that if I went to Trump Tower to hang out, I would be one more ugly paparazzi and unable to talk with anyone.  But the Harvard JFK School and the Institute of Politics is different.  People come here to talk with the people who will be the next generation of leaders.   Generally the public is welcome, but happily for me almost no "public" is here.  I don't sneak.  I introduce myself as a visitor, an alum of the college.   Sometimes I mention that I do admissions work as a volunteer and that I am a donor.  I let them imagine how many zeros are in the checks I write.   Twice I have been asked to "show ID".  I give them my Oregon Drivers License and note I have a Harvard address.  Twice it has worked!  I live on Harvard Place in Medford, Oregon.  "OK, thank you, sir," they said.   I am "sir" now.   Apparently I look old.

The world comes here.   After the flury of activity last week I am
prepared for a quieter period.   I am attaching below the events that I know of for sure happening the next 48 hours.   I don't doubt that I am missing other things, including the open museums of Natural History, of Art, of Science and more, I am sure.   But I show the posters here below to give readers an impression of what a cornucopia of events is available to someone spending time here.   Back when I was a student I was busy with classes, with work, with papers to write.   I did not have time to sleep, much less attend lectures and events.  So here I am.   It turns out that Wednesday and Thursday have even more events, ones stacked onto others.   

Enough already! Race? We don't want to hear it.

The Clinton Campaign and Trump Campaign exchanged sharp words at Harvard.

The news has been covering the bickering between the Clinton and Trump campaigns.   It came in audiotaped--but not videotaped--meetings at the Institute of Politics at the JFK School of Government on .Wednesday and Thursday of this week.   I watched the dustup between Bobby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager, and Kellyanne Conway, the Trump campaign manager that has not yet been in the news since the event is embargoed until Sunday morning when it will be broadcast on CNN's State of the Nation show.

Their were more sharp words about race and who ran a racist campaign in an event not yet public.   Bobby Mook said the Trump campaign and its semi-official web news outlet, Breitbart.com, were making white racist appeals in the campaign.   Kellyanne Conway dismissed it.   In my post yesterday I said it was a "dog whistle" campaign message, with racial messages made in a way that was deniable.  Indeed, I watched it denied, vigorously.

Frequent Guest Post author Thad Guyer commented that both campaigns were essentially equivalent in their appeals to "identity politics", with Trump making comments about Mexicans and Muslims that were, to quote Paul Ryan, "textbook racism"; meanwhile, Clinton appealed to people of color, describing her election as the path to ending their oppression.  Both ran openly racist campaigns and there was nothing subtle or unheard about it, Guyer said.  We witnessed two racist campaigns.

My own sense is that the Clinton campaign persisted with identity politics through to the end.  She wanted and and expected women to vote their gender, blacks their race, and Hispanics their resentment at being broad brushed as criminal.   She did not say whites were criminals, nor rapists, nor terrorist-sympathizers but she did position whites as beneficiaries of prejudice and perpetrators of it.  In Hillary's world view Goldman Sachs, with its exemplary efforts in diversity, hiring women and blacks from Ivy League colleges, was doing good.  A working class white man, struggling to get by on $12/hour, frustrated by competition from new immigrants to his work as a house framer or concrete finisher, was a deplorable.   She never really shook off that message and positioning.

In the closing two weeks of the campaign Trump shifted emphasis.  News reports focused on his use of a teleprompter but my own observations is that key was the change in message.   It was less about criminal people of color and more about jobs and corruption in Washington DC.  He presumably had locked in his race-resentment white base, but his open racism was offensive to some regular Republican voters--the kinds of people who agree with Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell that overt open racism is contrary to American values, and given our struggles in the Middle East with Muslim-majority allies, against American interests.

Poll insiders Joel Breneman and Tony Fabrizio at Harvard Thursday

On Thursday I witnessed the pollsters of both campaigns report that they watched the undecided voters and voters who said they favored 3rd parties break decisively for Trump in those last two weeks of the campaign.  As Kellyanne Conway put it, voters decided to ignore what offended them in order to vote for policies that affected them.

Trump quit offending voters uncomfortable with his race hints and began talking about jobs, trade, special interests, and draining the swamp.   The racial undertone went silent.   It became a dog whistle, not overt and audible, which gave non racists permission to vote for Trump.

To her disadvantage and peril, Hillary Clinton never gave up identity politics and did not express a clear appeal to jobs for blue collar white men, who she lost in such numbers that some blue states tipped red.   In the Hillary Clinton frame, white blue collar males were the oppressors.  They don't feel like oppressors, and they didn't like being called an oppressor.

Guyer

Thad Guyer Comment

"Battle of the Racist Dog Whistles"—at first blush, that might sound like a pretty good title for the Harvard conference. Wikipedia gives a good definition of the operative term: “Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.” By that definition, I’m not convinced we were hearing dog whistles at all. Dog whistles are supposed to be subtle and inaudible except for a special few. Trump’s call that illegal Mexican immigration are rapists and criminals was audible to everyone as a racist message. Clinton’s basket of deplorables was audible to everyone as a racist message. I’m not hearing the subtlety or hidden nature of the messages. What I heard were two fundamentally racist campaigns battling it out under the semi-legitimate label of “identity politics”. 

“If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri railed at the Harvard conference. No subtlety or dog whistles there. This message that the Trump deplorables--i.e., “half” of those white working class voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan-- are racists ultimately became the cornerstone of the Clinton campaign. It was no less a racist message than Trump’s message against illegal immigrants and Muslims. 

Clinton rallied dark skinned voters against white skinned voters, just as Trump rallied white skinned voters against dark skinned voters. There was nothing subtle about it. Obama’s hope that, with his election, America had entered a new golden “post racial” political era was audacious indeed. Trump and Clinton ran loud and audible racist campaigns, and that is our new political reality. We should be so lucky as to return to the days of dog whistles. That might well be our new audacity of hope. 

Fighting at Harvard

Sometimes I am in the room.   Sometimes I am just outside the room.  Meanwhile, the campaign managers tell all.

Showtime:  Tapper, Conway, Mook

I did not get to ask a question on CNN.   There were five hand-picked Harvard students who took up most of the time and the microphone was on the other side of the room.   But Jake Tapper basically asked my question:  What was Trump thinking in saying that there were millions of fraudulent votes, in the face of his indignation at the very suggestion that possibly his close wins in the upper midwest should be audited.

Kellyanne Conway is a spectacular communicator.  When asked the question directly I watched her switch the subject to Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky then say that the media and Democrats are sore losers and then say that we should look forward, not backward.   Deflect. Accuse. Ignore. Run out the clock.  And say it firmly without a hint of apology or recognition that one is deflecting, accusing, ignoring, and running out the clock.

Cynical  Brilliant. Underhanded but effective. Just what one would want in your attorney.   

The Campaign Managers conference at Harvard is in the news for the moments of fireworks--the Clinton campaign saying that Trump used xenophobic dog whistles.  Kellyanne Conway was indignant.  The media is acting surprised and there are headlines and news stories on cable news this morning over this flash of disagreement.   This dustup reveals in itself the nature of dog whistles.   Dog whistles can be signaled, but denied.  They can be heard without being uttered.  It is the nature of dog whistles that they can be denied.  No fingerprints.  Kellyanne denied dog whistles, looking straight at the camera, sincerely and with indignation.

Every Republican campaign manager complained about the Trump celebrity all-Trump-all-the-time on the news shows.   CNN received sharp criticism from multiple sources.  They showed an empty stage and lectern marked Trump rather than a live speech by another candidate.   Yet, each candidate manager reported on their own sense of when they realized that Trump was a force to be reckoned with.  Bobby Jindal's campaign manager said it was when he was at the Jindal booth at the Iowa state fair and people were asking him questions abut Trump.   The Bush manager said it was when the staff people in the Bush campaign stopped what they were doing to watch the Trump announcement with rapt attention and then, two days later when it was repeated on a cable network every staff person again stopped to watch it again.   Trump made news.  Trump was interesting.  Trump drew ratings.  This blog referred to the campaign as a spectacle.  The campaign managers confirmed that view.

The Hillary Clinton campaign manager said he was not asleep at the switch and unaware of his candidate's liabilities.  He said they understood perfectly well that this was likely a change election.  They understood that the economy was overlooking some people in the rust belt, exactly the kinds of people who defected.  They understood that Hillary did not connect with young people and that her saying she had not driven a car in 20 years was off-putting.  He said they went to Pennsylvania, that they worked for the votes of working people.

He said something revealing of the problem.  He said they addressed these with policies that focused on "children and families."

This blog reported on Hillary's closing argument TV ads, and noted that they presented her as a warm and likable person concerned about "children and families".  (The phrase "children and families" was spoken often both by Hillary and at this conference by the campaign.)

It makes sense that the Clinton campaign badly underperformed with white male blue collar workers.  "Children and families" does not address manly work.  Hillary's campaign--and even now her campaign spokesman and manager--did not speak to images of males as breadwinners, as people who do work then come home to shower.   A Facebook post which showed the attached photo with the portable boom lift machine drew a comment that it looked like a photo of "boys toys."   It did, indeed. The dozen or fifteen electricians who spent two days setting up the lights were all men.  Solid men, who wore coveralls and boots.   Lighting the forum was "man's work" in fact if not in law.  Hillary's campaign did not speak directly to jobs, to hard blue collar work, to factories that make heavy things, things like air conditioners, or steel, or mine coal.  

Trump did.

Setting it up was men's work with boy toys

Trump's supposed "thank you tour" shifted into an end zone celebration dance and what might have been an un-alloyed success became tainted for him by the gloating tone.   I was right, the media was wrong, he said.   I won, Hillary lost.  I can change America quickly and easily and bring jobs back, and the existing president could not.   The crowd caught the triumphal tone:  "Lock her up!"

Trump is running the risk here of the "Mission Accomplished" trap that George Bush fell into.   Gloating is dangerous.

The Hillary campaign manager said this was a "post-fact" campaign, and the conference speakers were critical of the media for not better fact-checking Trump.   (Right there last night Jake Tapper attempted it with Kellyanne Conway and the "millions of fraudulent voters" assertion and she swatted it away.) 

Trump has upset the old international order, one based in part of the reality of technology and demographics and capitalism.  Democrats and the establishment-Republicans together had formed a political understanding regarding America's place in the world: first among many, a beneficiary of international rules, a trading partner who gained as much as it lost from the international order.  An element of this is acceptance of facts, of reality, of common sense.  The canard is familiar: "You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts."   Trump broke that rule, with the consent of the American voter.  In Indiana he was triumphant in victory, saying he won the election and he saved the jobs and that things were going to be wonderful.  

He wrapped himself in patriotic service.  If Trump won then America won.  Trump promised to win.

Does that put Trump in great peril?  After all, if reversing the tide of technology and economics were easy then it would have been done long ago.   Isn't Trump setting himself up for a fall?

Not necessarily.

Now Obama is reality, Trump is Hope and Change

Trump has seized the mantle of patriotism, while the foolish Democrats and old-style Republicans are stuck with the burden of realism and common sense and facts on the ground.   When Democrats cannot stop the reality of technology and economics it is a sign of their weakness and failure.   When Trump faces the same reality he is inoculated.  Trump is not attempting to explain the reality of anything.  He is a warrior on behalf of America. The  inevitable problems are not a sign of his weakness but the perfidy of our enemies and competitors.

Kellyanne Conway demonstrated how the Trump campaign and presidency deals successfully with the problem of inconvenient facts being presented to you:  deflect, accuse, ignore, and look forward.   Trump is well positioned to withstand the perils of mere reality.

Live on CNN. What question should I ask?

Kellyanne Conway and Bobby Mook will be holding a forum at the JFK School of Government at Harvard.   I will be there.  

Poster for the event

Kellyanne Conway joined the Trump campaign as its Campaign Manager and brought some order to it in the final two months.   There was immediate change.   Trump--at long last--began staying on message, a message that resonated with the public.  He began using a teleprompter, mostly.  He became more credible as a president, becoming more "presidential."   He made the transition from media spectacle to candidate-spectacle.
 
Bobby Mook was the Campaign Manager for Hillary Clinton.

Both of them will be here at the JFK School Institute of Politics, interviewed by Jake Tapper, CNN newsman, in a live forum.

I am in Cambridge, Massachusetts attending events here at the JFK School and was on the signup list and I got the email I hoped to receive, telling me to show up to get my ticket.

What question should Kellyanne Conway be asked?   I am on a short deadline: the forum will be Thusday evening at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.   But send your emails or comments.

My tentative question:

Setting up the forum room with special lighting

"At the beginning of the week Mr. Trump voiced indignation and outrage at the 'ridiculous' notion that the results of the close elections in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania might be questioned.  How can you question the election.  Then Mr. Trump tweeted that the entire election was full of fraud with three million fraudulent votes--which directly contradicted and undermined what he had just said.  Did he not realize he was contradicting himself?  Did he know, but think the media and public wouldn't notice?  Did he change his mind?   Does Mr. Trump think, as a master salesman, he can sell it both ways?   How does Mr. Trump think?"

I welcome a better suggestion.

Podcast: Clinton Pollster Joel Beneson/Trump pollster Tony Fabricio

A note on the construction equipment in the Forum venue.  The various talks given here are routinely televised and available at the Institute of Politics website.  But CNN will be broadcasting this.  The twenty people I saw on Tuesday working on the space were setting up special lighting equipment since CNN will be broadcasting in high definition.   The busy electricians and lighting people took a minute to explain.  "See each of these lights" a man in coveralls asked me?  "Each one has a purpose, to fill in wrinkles and shadows on faces whichever way they turn.   It is all about the high def.  You gotta light it just right."   I will recount the special lights later this morning but my estimate is 25 additional lights placed at strategic places on black metal rods.  They look like the one in the immediate foreground of the photo here.

The Left is Making Unforced Errors

It is OK for the left to admit mistakes.   It is healthy.  It is part of the process of regaining the majority.

One mistake was confusing the progress in the culture war with the centerpiece of politics.  Bill Clinton's campaign understood something the current left forgot: "It's the economy, stupid."

 A lot of voters oppose abortion and gay marriage and they are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with transgender people, and--at least currently--they have lost the culture war.  But the left needs to have a bigger purpose than consolidating those cultural gains.    And they do, sort of.   But not publicly, front and center.  

This could have been Obama, but it wasn't

It wasn't just Hillary's fault--even though her campaign themes focused on inclusion, not jobs, even in the face of plenty of evidence that Trump was winning the jobs message.  Obama did not help.  Barrack Obama wasn't seen as fighting for jobs. It did not become a Democratic issue.  

Trump just got a big win with this story on Carrier.  He showed himself to be "can do."  It inoculates him from appointing a Goldman man as Treasury Secretary.  Worse, for Democrats, but it was also a big loss for them.  They could have acted but did not.   Why didn't Obama make a big public attempt to save those jobs?   If he had been rebuffed and criticized as a socialist, all the better for the politics of it.   What could be better for Democrats than for Obama to have been seen as attacked by big business and the national Chamber of Commerce with their Republican ties?  The optics would have been great--either way.   Either the Democrat saves the jobs or he is rebuffed by Republicans.   But he did not.

We elected a black president.  Gay marriage has been normalized and is now--currently--a constitutional right.  There is progress in the culture wars (although the election results suggest there will be retreat and possibly even reversal.)   But $25/hour jobs were going offshore.    It's the economy, stupid.  Click Here. Trump saves 1000 Jobs

Guest poster author Thad Guyer makes an extended argument picking up on these same themes.  Guyer's comments will be uncomfortable for many progressive readers who will consider him angry and pitiless.   Progressive readers should not take comfort in the popular vote victory.  The 2016 results showed that the progressive left has lost a critical part of a progressive coalition because their message no longer motivates working class white males for whom issues of reproductive rights and racial inclusion are not important--or are negatives.

Guest Comment by Thad Guyer

"The Left Loses Its Voice"

“The Russians are coming”, “fake news is undermining our democracy”, “electors have a right to ignore their voters”, “sanctuary cities stand at the ready to thwart deportation of criminals”, and “Trump wants to violate our constitutional right of flag burning”, our side’s newspapers proclaim. The sky is falling. We nee d to calm down. 

Thad Guyer:Guest Post

(1) The “fake news” label is now our bane. Obama didn’t use the term, but Germany’s Merkel did on the same stage with the President. Hence, it is now the coin of the Democratic party. (See, NYT, “Obama, With Angela Merkel in Berlin, Assails Spread of Fake News”, https://goo.gl/WDLrQ8, Nov 17, 2016). No sooner did the left coin “fake news”, than the right has been able to throw it in our faces as to our own fake headlines. And it is a powerful delegitimizer of whatever credibility the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN had left. “The Russians” defaced our election? No, the left’s falsehoods about Russia defaced it as much as the right. (See, WP, “If you’re even asking if Russia hacked the election, Russia got what it wanted”, https://goo.gl/K4J7eD, Nov 28, 2016).

(2) A viral post by “Lawyers on the Left” touts the filing of lawsuits across the nation to strike down state laws requiring delegate loyalty to voters in the electoral college. See, DailyKos, “A lawyer in California just filed suit against the Electoral College as it violates equal protection”, https://goo.gl/kh1ppU, Nov 19, 2016). The November 29th post reads in part, “F _ _ k this peaceful transition of power”, and “let’s flood the federal courts this week”. Even assuming such lawsuits have legal merit, the sentiment that Democrats would be better off undermining the electoral system conveys a desperation and “anything goes” approach that can surely do one thing—undermine the left’s voice even further.

(3) Apart from Democratic values embracing immigrants and not terrorizing immigrant communities, the message that the left stands in unison with convicted immigrant criminals certainly resounds with most Americans—resounds very badly for us. With Democratic leaders from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles proclaiming that we most certainly will not let either the Obama or Trump administrations deport felons on the day of their release from jail sentences, well, who needs enemies? It’s a decidedly losing strategy to regain our majority.

(4) Finally, our left media is now ablaze with claims that Trump advocates violating the constitution in wanting to criminalize flag burning—something Senator Clinton voted for long after the Supreme Court articulated the 1st Amendment right to burn the flag. 
(See, Newsweek, “Before Donald Trump Called for Flag-Burning Jail Time, Hillary Clinton Did”, https://goo.gl/43IXta, Nov. 29, 2016). Few left media articles mention Clinton’s vote. And while we’re told the Supreme Court memorialized this flag burning right, most articles hide that it was a 5-4 vote. You’d think a boogey man of the alt-right wrote this dissent in insisting flag burning is a criminal act: “The case has nothing to do with 'disagreeable ideas.' It involves disagreeable conduct that, in my opinion, diminishes the value of an important national asset". The dissenter? Liberal justice John Paul Stevens. (See, Texas v. Johnson, 1989, https://goo.gl/C0OwHI, Wikipedia). Its the same for Trump’s suggestion that citizenship revocation might be an appropriate penalty, a constitutional prohibition established on a mere 5-4 vote when no ultra-conservatives even served on the Court. (See, Afroyim v. Rusk, 1967, https://goo.gl/PP6M6P, Wikipedia).

Trump doesn’t need to “violate the Constitution”. He just needs a new 5-4 majority to overrule these tenuously established constitutional rights. And as we alienate our pitched voice from majority America, we bring Trump closer to the “achievements” we want to prevent.

Crisis Technique

"Never complain and never explain."

The quote is attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, and Wallis Simpson, and Katherine Hepburn.

Donald Trump gets it.

Trump:  So what?

Donald Trump is being accused of having conflicts of interest.  The Democrats on the House Oversight Committed write:   "The scope of Mr. Trump's conflicts of interest around the world is unprecedented.  Over the past two weeks new revelations have raised serious concerns about the intermingling of Mr. Trump's businesses and his responsibilities as president."

These conflicts are not "technical" or in some sort of gray area.  He mixes presidential visits with asking foreign leaders to use his hotels.  He has development projects that need foreign government approvals.  The conflicts are obvious and material.  More important, they take place in the context of Trump having said he wanted to "drain the swamp" of conflicts of interest.

Is Trump acting sheepish?   No.   Trump stands tall and says he can do it and says it is not a problem.  Case closed.

Trump called Hillary Clinton "crooked" and blasted her for illegal and dangerous handling of classified material.   FBI Director Comey distinguished between Hillary and General Petraeus, who pled guilty to mishandling material.   Petraeus did it intentionally, he lied to the FBI about it, and the FBI found the evidence of his guilt hidden within the ceiling insulation of Petraeus' home--obvious evidence of intent to deceive.  Hillary cooperated with the FBI's investigation.  Trump is openly considering Petraeus for Secretary of State.

No mumbling of excuses from Trump. 

Trump's recent tweets on the election have a direct contradiction, as this blog noted yesterday.  He was both indignant that Jill Stein would question the election result, and simultaneously said the election was fraudulent and rigged.   The news is calling him out, saying his comments are false, pure and simple.

No mumbling.  No apology, no explaining from Trump.

Trump is thin skinned and is very sensitive to slights.  He understands that he is the subject of questions and criticism.   Key to Trump's method is that he does not accept the validity of criticism.  He responds to this by attacking.  He accuses.  He is right and they are wrong.  Period.

No apology.  He was hungry.

I imagine that the lion does not empathize with the gazelle.  The lion sees dinner.  The lion's power and right to eat is absolute.   He is hungry.  What else matters?

President Obama projected a very different sensibility.   Obama communicated that he saw America within the context of other countries and saw himself and his presidency within the context of checks and balances.  Mitch McConnell certainly forced that consciousness onto him because Obama could get little passed.   This is the constitutional system and it fit Obama's tone.

Voters voted for it but they are simultaneously impatient with gridlock.   They were uncomfortable with Obamacare but Obama pushed forward with it, so the Democrats lost their majority and ability to legislate.   It made Obama look constrained.  Republicans called him weak and feckless and compared him badly with Putin.   Trump was the strongest and most Putin like of the Republican alternatives and a big part of that was how he handled being caught in contradictions or inaccuracies (sometimes referred to as "lies".)

He acts like he does not notice and he does not care, not one bit.  There is no apparent sense of guilt or shame or inconsistency.   He is impervious.  It come across to many people as strength and resoluteness.

Trump communicates that he will break through gridlock, because he cannot be contradicted.  This frightens Democrats but it excites a great many voters.   Trump will shake things up, people think.   He communicates that he won't be deterred by critics, and until he begins making actual changes people think they want things shaken up.