38. Ford.
39. David Montero, “Jones Settles Chobani Lawsuit and Retracts Comments about Refugees in Twin Falls, Idaho,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-chobani-alex-jones-20170517-story.html; Mallory Shelbourne, “Infowars’ Alex Jones Apologizes for Pushing ‘Pizzagate’ Conspiracy Theory,” Hill, March 25, 2017, https://thehill.com/homenews/325761-infowars-alex-jones-apologizes-for-pushing-pizzagate-conspiracy-theory.
40. “Belleville Woman Helped Cook Up Pizzagate,” Star (Toronto), December 7, 2016, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/12/07/belleville-woman-helped-cook-up-pizzagate.html.
41. Michael M. Gryngaum, “Right-Wing Media Uses Parkland Shooting as Conspiracy Fodder,” New York Times, February 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/business/media/parkland-shooting-media-conspiracy.html.
42. Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Donald Trump’s False Comments Connecting Mexican Immigrants and Crime,” Washington Post, July 8, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/.
43. Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “scapegoat,” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/171946.
44. Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 89.
45. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, June 19, 2018, 6:52 a.m., https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1009071403918864385?lang=en.
Chapter 3. Presidential Conspiracism
1. Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, new ed. with afterword by the author (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
2. Tulis, 203.
3. James Madison, Federalist, no. 10, November 23, 1787, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-10.
4. John Jay, Federalist, no. 2, October 31, 1787, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-2.
5. “Transcript, Illinois Senate Candidate Barack Obama,” Washington Post, July 27, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html.
6. “Here’s Donald Trump’s Presidential Announcement Speech,” Time, June 16, 2015, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/.
7. Inis Novacic, “Muslim Enclave in U.S. Battles Suspicion, Alleged Threats,” CBS News, July 16, 2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-islamberg/.
8. Jenna Johnson, “Trump Doesn’t Correct Rally Attendee Who Says Obama Is a Muslim and Not Even an American,” Washington Post, September 17, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/17/trump-doesnt-correct-rally-attendee-who-says-obama-is-muslim-and-not-even-an-american/.
9. C. K. Williams, “Bishop Tutu’s Visit to the White House: 1984,” in Selected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994), 133.
10. Daren Butler and Orhan Coskon, “Turkish Troops Hunt Remaining Coup Plotters as Crackdown Widens,” Reuters, July 26, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN1061DK.
11. After the referendum, suspicious about negotiations over leaving the European Union, Brexit supporters turn conspiracist: George Soros (Jewish money) is working to overturn the referendum results and “to flood Christian Europe with Muslim refugees.” See “Brexiters Now March with the Toxic Conspiracies of Orban’s Hungary,” Guardian, February 10, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/10/brexiters-now-march-with-toxic-conspirators-of-orbans-hungary.
12. We speak of populism as a political style in this context because Trump’s policies—with the exception of his border wall and a few other items—are those of conservative Republicans. We call this the “partisan penumbra,” the subject of chapter 4. Populist policy typically consists of protection from the foreign: protecting the country from immigrants via extreme measures (“Build the wall!”) and nativist clamor for protection from foreign competition that hurts workers (“End NAFTA!”). Trump adheres to these positions, at least rhetorically. But one might ask whether policies that advantage the 1 percent, harm the middle class, and erode the safety net of the least well off are genuinely populist.
13. Jan-Werner Müeller, “The Majority of Deplorables?,” Project Syndicate, November 10, 2016, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-voters-opposition-to-democracy-by-jan-werner-mueller-2016-11; Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
14. Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 10. The quote from Rosenblum is on p. 20.
15. William Galston, Anti-pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
16. Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 130–35; Nadia Urbinati, “Populism and the Principle of Majority,” in The Oxford Handbook on Pluralism, ed. Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
17. Haley Muse, “Jake Tapper Lists Conspiracy Theories Spread by Trump,” CNN, May 23, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/23/politics/jake-tapper-trump-conspiracy-theories-special-counsel-cnntv/index.html; Maggie Haberman, “Even as He Rises, Donald Trump Entertains Conspiracy Theories,” New York Times, February 29, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories.html.
18. Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow, “The Conspiracy Memo about Obama Aides That Circulated in the Trump White House,” New Yorker, August 23, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-conspiracy-memo-aimed-at-obama-aides-that-circulated-in-the-trump-white-house.
19. Julie Hirschfield Davis and Maggie Haberman, “After Vowing to Fix Washington, Trump Is Mired in a Familiar Crisis,” New York Times, January 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/us/politics/trump-shutdown.html.
20. Louis Jacobson, “In Context: Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment People’ Comment,” PolitiFact, August 9, 2016, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/aug/09/context-donald-trumps-second-amendment-people-comm/.
21. Conversation with talk show host Joe Scarborough as reported in Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Henry Holt, 2018), 47.
22. Quoted in Charles Blow, “In Defense of Truth,” New York Times, September 4, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/trump-truth-wiretapping-obama.html.
23. Peter Baker and Eileen Sullivan, “Trump Has a Few Things He’d Like to Get off His Chest,” New York Times, June 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/politics/trump-fbi-democrats-obama.html.
24. Greg Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made 3001 False or Misleading Claims So Far,” Washington Post, May 1, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/?utm_term=.c0109235a6dd; Daniel Dale, “Donald Trump Makes 21 False Claims in Missouri Speech on Tax Plan,” Star (Toronto), December 7, 2017, https://www.thestar.com/news/0world/analysis/2017/11/28/daniel-dales-donald-trump-fact-check-updates.html.
25. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker report cited in Charles Blow, “What Doesn’t Kill Him Makes Him Stronger,” New York Times, July 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/opinion/donald-trump-facts-lies.htm.
26. Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in The Power of the Powerless, intro. by Steven Lukes, ed. John Keane (New York: Routledge, 2015), 27.
27. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
28. Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), 234.
29. Robert Jay Lifton, The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival (New York: New Press, 2017), 67–70.
30. Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, “A Conspiracy Theory’s Journey from Talk Radio to Trump’s Twitter,” New York Time
s, March 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/trump-twitter-talk-radio-conspiracy-theory.html.
31. Jim Sciutto and Mary Kay Mallonee, “CIA Director Met with DNC Hack Conspiracy Theorist at Trump’s Urging,” CNN, November 8, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/mike-pompeo-william-binney-meeting/index.html.
32. “Why Has Kris Kobach’s Voter Fraud Commission Disappeared?,” editorial, Kansas City Star, November 1, 2017, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article182150656.html.
33. Lee Moran, “Seth Meyers Tears into Donald Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Tweets during James Comey Hearing,” Huffington Post, March 21, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/seth-meyers-donald-trump-comey-hearing_us_58d0d371e4b0ec9d29ded0ce?.
34. Thomas Friedman, “Peanut Butter on the Trump Team’s Chins,” New York Times, March 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/peanut-butter-on-the-trump-teams-chins.html.
35. Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2017), 38.
36. Green, 190.
37. Peter Baker, “Bound to No Party, Trump Upends 150 Years of Two-Party Rule,” New York Times, September 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/us/politics/trump-republicans-third-parties.html.
38. Susan B. Glasser, “The GOPs Civil War over Trump,” Politico Magazine, August 14, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/14/donald-trump-future-of-gop-roundtable-215485.
39. Green, Devil’s Bargain, 169.
40. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Trump Republicans Invigorate, and Complicate, Party’s Fight for Senate,” New York Times, August 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/us/politics/senate-trump-lou-barletta-.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=A71A1C2523EB0B9C3BFF4F8728F7C20E&gwt=pay.
41. Mike DeBonis and Josh Wagner, “House Rejects Immigration Bill Pushed by Trump in Last-Minute Tweet,” Washington Post, June 27, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-using-all-caps-in-a-tweet-urges-passage-of-the-house-gop-immigration-bill/2018/06/27/989b2ad8-7960-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.92adc52f3cd2.
42. Charles Blow, “Rise of the Roypublicans,” New York Times, December 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/opinion/republicans-roy-moore-harassment.html.
Chapter 4. Political Parties
1. Pierre Rosanvallon, Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 163; Rosanvallon’s focus, in addition to administration, is oversight by constitutional courts. For an empirical account of the American pendulum swing between popular democracy and administration, see Bruce Cain, Democracy More or Less: America’s Political Reform Quandary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Many theorists of democracy recognize just one of these institutions as foundational: political representation. The questions that propel their work have to do with the justification and design of institutions where conflicting interests and values are expressed, deliberated, and resolved. Few focus on the administrative state or what is variously called bureaucracy or technocracy.
2. Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
3. Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, “The Partisan Connection,” California Law Review Circuit 3 (March 2012): 99–102.
4. Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 25.
5. Nancy L. Rosenblum, On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
6. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
7. See, for example, Bruce Ackerman, We the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); and Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
8. Mark Lander, “Trump Accuses Democrats of ‘Treason’ amid Market Rout,” New York Times, February 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/us/politics/trump-accuses-democrats-treason-market-rout.html.
9. Brandon Carter, “Huckabee Sanders: Dems Need to Decide Whether They ‘Hate’ Trump ‘More than They Love This Country,’ ” Hill, February 6, 2018, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/372615-huckabee-sanders-dems-need-to-decide-if-they-hate-trump-more-than.
10. Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “Trump Ruins Irony, Too,” New York Times, March 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/opinion/trump-ruins-irony-too.html.
11. Tim Carpenter, “Kansas Panel Delays Ballot Decision on Obama,” Topeka Capital-Journal, September 13, 2012, http://www.cjonline.com/2016-04-05/stub-2060.
12. Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2017), 9.
13. Michael D. Shear, “If G.O.P. Loses Hold on Congress, Trump Warns, Democrats Will Enact Change ‘Quickly and Violently,’ ” New York Times, August 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/us/politics/trump-evangelical-pastors-election.html.
14. Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear, “Supreme Court Weighs Obama’s Immigration Plan,” New York Times, April 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/us/politics/supreme-court-immigration.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.
15. Jennifer Steinhauer, “Mitch McConnell’s Stance in Confirmation Fight Could Help and Hurt GOP,” New York Times, February 14, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/us/politics/mitch-mcconnells-stance-in-confirmation-fight-could-help-and-hurt-gop.html.
16. Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, “The Threat of Bush’s Signing Statements,” op-ed, Brookings Institute, July 7, 2006, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-threat-of-bushs-signing-statements/.
17. Green, Devil’s Bargain, 222.
18. “Transcript of the N.H. GOP Debate, Annotated,” Washington Post, February 6, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/06/transcript-of-the-feb-6-gop-debate-annotated/?utm_term=.bf8eadaf400e.
19. Green, Devil’s Bargain, 8.
20. Frank J. Sorauf, “Extra-legal Political Parties in Wisconsin,” American Political Science Review 48, no. 3 (September 1954): 692–704, 692.
21. Quoted in Eldon Eisenach, The Next Religious Establishment: National Identity and Political Theology in Post-Protestant America (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 116.
22. Quoted in Green, Devil’s Bargain, 117.
23. Julie Hirschfield, “Trump, in Wake of Deal to Avoid a Shutdown Now, Calls for One Later,” New York Times, May 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/politics/good-shutdown-congress-trump.html.
24. Matt Grossmann, “Missing Conservatism? Just Wait for a Democratic President,” New York Times, February 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/opinion/trump-conservatism-republicans.html.
25. Grossmann, noting that Republicans’ only victories are lowering taxes and building the military.
26. Two essays focused on what their authors characterize as conspiracism from the left today are McKay Coppins, “How the Left Lost Its Mind,” Atlantic Monthly, July 2, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/liberal-fever-swamps/530736/; and Colin Dickey, “The New Paranoia,” New Republic, June 8, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/article/142977/new-paranoia-trump-election-turns-democrats-conspiracy-theorists.
27. “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” Pew Research Center, June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/.
28. David Brooks, “Why Partyism Is Wrong,” New York Times, October 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/opinion/david-brooks-why-partyism-is-wrong.html. This is in contrast to the era of open and moderate partisanship in the 1950s and 1960s, when few cared whether their children married someone with an allegiance to the opposite party. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeto
n, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).
29. “Partisanship and Political Animosity.”
Chapter 5. Knowledge
1. Brendan Nyhan, “Why the ‘Death Panel’ Myth Wouldn’t Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate,” Forum 8, no. 1 (2010): Article 5, https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/for.2010.8.1_20120105083456/for.2010.8.1/for.2010.8.1.1354/for.2010.8.1.1354.xml.
2. Paul Krugman, “Facts Are Enemies of the People,” New York Times, March 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/facts-are-enemies-of-the-people.html.
3. Tina Nguyen, “Trump Smears 3,000 Dead Puerto Ricans, Calls Hurricane Maria Death Toll a Democratic Hoax,” Vanity Fair, September 13, 2018, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/09/trump-death-toll-puerto-rico-democrat-hoax.
4. Michael E. Miller, “The GOP’s Dangerous ‘Debate’ on Vaccines and Autism,” Washington Post, September 17, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/17/the-gops-dangerous-debate-on-vaccines-and-autism/.
5. Joshua Zeitz, “Lessons from the Fake News Pandemic of 1942,” Politico Magazine, March 12, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/lessons-from-the-fake-news-pandemic-of-1942-214898.
6. “Meet the Press 01/22/17,” full text, NBC News, January 22, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-01-22-17-n710491.
7. Ashley Parker and Steve Eder, “Inside the Six Weeks Donald Trump Was a Nonstop ‘Birther,’ ” New York Times, July 2, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/donald-trump-birther-obama.html.
8. Brian Tashman, “58 Donald Trump Conspiracy Theories (and Counting): The Definitive Donald Trump Conspiracy Guide,” Right Wing Watch, May 27, 2016, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/58-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-and-counting-the-definitive-trump-conspiracy-guide/.
A Lot of People Are Saying Page 18
