What sets Trump apart from history's worst dictators

68 Pages·2017·4.99 MB·English

WHY TRUMP LIES THE END OF GIRLS THE GOP’S ANTI-PROTEST LAWS
APRIL 2017
What sets
Trump
apart from
history’s
worst
dictators
WHY BLUE STATES
SHOULD EXIT
RED AMERICA
HOW POLICE TRIED
TO BUST A REFUGEE
SMUGGLER—AND
GOT THE WRONG MAN
DISCOVER WONDER .
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contents
APRIL
2017
UP FRONT
18
6 Trump’s Fuzzy Border Math
Meet the far-right “think tank” pushing
to ban immigration. BY LAURA RESTON
8 The Anti-Protest Backlash
Republican lawmakers are trying to
criminalize dissent. BY CLIO CHANG
9 The Trump Tweetometer
A highly precise quantitative analysis of
last month’s presidential tweets.
10 Why Lying Is So Easy for Trump
For New York developers, deception is
good for business. BY BEN ADLER
12 Trump vs. Warren
Why is a so-called populist dismantling
the cfpb? BY ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK
COLUMNS
14 Trump’s Brain
Think Steve Bannon is calling the shots?
It’s Time for Bluexit Think again. BY MATTHEW PHELAN
16 Don’t Stop the Press!
Why the media should become a true
What would the United States look like without us?
“opposition party.” BY LEAH FINNEGAN
A declaration of independence from Trump’s America.
BY KEVIN BAKER REVIEW
44 They Could Be Heroes
Today’s biggest novelists are throwbacks
26 34
to a simpler time. BY SAM SACKS
50 Girls, Interrupted
How Lena Dunham defied expectations
Before the Ban Amazing Disgrace
and remade TV. BY SARAH MARSHALL
One family’s journey from Iraq to How a thrice-married, biblically
56 Voices of America
Ohio—and how their life has changed illiterate sexual predator hijacked
Can podcasts tell us more than stories of
under Trump. TEXT BY ATOSSA ARAXIA the religious right.
individual obsession? BY MICHELLE DEAN
ABRAHAMIAN | PHOTOS BY HOLLY PICKETT BY SARAH POSNER
58 Yes All Women
Feminists do not have to be ideologically
38 52 pure to be radical. BY MAGGIE DOHERTY
61 The Night Shift

The true cause of our sleeplessness
CK The General and the All-American Tyrant epidemic. BY JACOB SILVERMAN
O
T
ERS Refugee It may be comforting to compare 64 Backstory
T
UT Police from four countries joined forces Trump to dictators like Hitler and PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTIA VACCA
H
N: S to bring down a notorious human Stalin. But to understand the threat he
ATIO smuggler. Here’s how they blew the poses, we must look more deeply into
TR operation. BY ERIC REIDY our own past. BY JEET HEER
S
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O I
T
O
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COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERTO PARADA
APRIL 2017 | 1
contributors
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a Brooklyn-based journalist whose work Editor in Chief
has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, Dissent, and The Win McCormack
Nation. She is the author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global
Editor
Citizen. BEFORE THE BAN, P. 26
Eric Bates
Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian, and journalist. He is known for his
Executive Editor Literary Editor
best-selling novels Dreamland, a tale of European immigrants arriving in Ryan Kearney Laura Marsh
New York at the turn of the century, and Paradise Alley, which chronicled Politics Editor Features Directors
the Civil War draft riots. His most recent book, America the Ingenious, Bob Moser Sasha Belenky
Theodore Ross
investigates the origins of 76 American inventions. BLUEXIT, P. 18 Deputy Editor
Ryu Spaeth Senior Editors
Michelle Dean is a contributing editor at the new republic and this Managing Editor Brian Beutler
Jeet Heer
year’s recipient of the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation Laura Reston
News Editor
for Excellence in Reviewing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Social Media Editor Alex Shephard
Sarah Jones
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. VOICES OF Staff Writers
AMERICA, P. 56 Design Director Emily Atkin
Graham Vyse
Siung Tjia
Maggie Doherty is a lecturer at Harvard University and the author of a Josephine Livingstone
Photo Director
Poetry Editor
forthcoming book about the intellectual friendships of a group of women Stephanie Heimann
Cathy Park Hong
artists at the birth of 1960s feminism. Her writing has appeared in The New Production Manager
Yorker and n+1. YES ALL WOMEN, P. 58 Steph Tan Reporter-Researchers
Clio Chang
Leah Finnegan has written for Gawker, The New York Times, The Awl, The Contributing Editors Lovia Gyarkye
James Burnett, Alexander Chee, Sukjong Hong
Associated Press, and The Morning News. She is currently an editor at The Ben Crair, Michelle Dean, Juliet Kleber
Outline and the author of the meta-media newsletter Leah Letter. DON’T Siddhartha Deb, Michael Nicole Narea
Eric Dyson, Paul Ford, Ted
STOP THE PRESS! P. 16 Genoways, William Giraldi, Interns
Dana Goldstein, Kathryn Joyce,
Eric Armstrong
Matthew Phelan is a freelance writer and editor based in New York. He Suki Kim, Maria Konnikova, Jasmine Bager
Corby Kummer, Michelle Legro,
Demetria Lee
has been covering Breitbart and its affiliates since 2012. His work has Jen Percy, Jamil Smith,
Sagari Shetty
Graeme Wood, Robert Wright
previously appeared in Jacobin, Wonkette, Salon, and Gawker, where he
founded the conspiracy vertical “Black Bag.” TRUMP’S BRAIN, P. 14
Holly Pickett is a New York–based photojournalist who worked in the Director of Marketing Director of Sales
and Revenue Suzanne Wilson
Middle East for nine years. She documented the Arab Spring uprisings in
Evelyn Frison Associate Account
2011, and has been photographing Syrian refugees since 2013. She has been
Audience and Executive
following the Bahar family, the subject of her photo essay, for almost a Partnership Manager Shawn Awan
decade. BEFORE THE BAN, P. 26 Eliza Fish
Controller
Media Relations Manager
Sarah Posner has reported on the religious right for more than a decade. Steph Leke David Myer
She is the author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade Associate Publisher Office Manager, NY
Tori Campbell
for Values Voters. Her reporting in this issue was supported by the Art Stupar
Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. AMAZING DISGRACE, P. 34
Publisher
Hamilton Fish
Eric Reidy is an investigative journalist based in Beirut whose current
focus is on migration and refugees. His reporting has taken him to nearly a
dozen countries around the Mediterranean. THE GENERAL AND THE
REFUGEE, P. 38 Published by Lake Avenue Publishing
1 Union Square West,
New York, NY 10003
Sam Sacks writes the Fiction Chronicle for The Wall Street Journal and is
President
a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly, an online arts and literature
Win McCormack
journal. He last wrote for the new republic on the professionalization of
fiction writing. THEY COULD BE HEROES, P. 44
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from the stacks
EVER SINCE THE first wave of Irish Catholics came to the United States in the
1840s, spawning the virulently xenophobic Know Nothing Party, nativism
has been a fixture of American politics. It follows a predictable pattern. An
economic crisis hits. Politicians exploit fears about newcomers stealing jobs.
And eventually, the latest wave of refugees assimilates into American society,
reaffirming that we are a nation of immigrants, founded on the promise of
a better life. ✯ In 2002, as Jean-Marie Le Pen and other nationalists surged
in Europe, new republic editor Peter Beinart observed that “nativism has
been silenced as a political force” in America. The reason: Bill Clinton had
created jobs for American workers, and George W. Bush had shown Republi-
cans they could embrace immigration and still win the presidency. ✯ Today,
far-right parties are once again ascendant in Europe. There’s another Le Pen
in France—Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine—as well as Geert Wilders in the
Netherlands and Frauke Petry in Germany. Here at home, it’s clear that Clin-
ton and Bush didn’t silence nativism—they temporarily muffled it. Donald
Trump has placed white fear at the center of American political life. He is the
new dog barking in the night, and no one has succeeded in muzzling him. ICE agents arrest an immigrant in California in February.
Peter Beinart
Quiet Time
MAY 13, 2002
In the short story “Silver Blaze,” Sherlock signed a welfare bill that denied food stamps its moral flaws—demolished that perception
Holmes draws Inspector Gregory’s attention to legal immigrants. In the mid-1990s the in the United States.
to “the curious incident of the dog in the night- United States was as nativist as France is Clinton fought nativism by changing lib-
time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” now—perhaps more so. eralism. But George W. Bush has changed
insists the confused Inspector. “That,” Holmes So what happened to silence nativism in conservatism, too. In 2000 the party chose
responds, “was the curious incident.” the United States? The answer is a happy as its standard-bearer one of its most com-
Last month in France, a dog barked at the and bipartisan story of political leadership mitted supporters of immigration. When
top of its lungs: Jean-Marie Le Pen placed by two men: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Buchanan spoke in Dallas in August 1995,
second in the first round of voting for the Clinton did not fight xenophobia on Bush went after him personally, declaring,
S
S
French presidency. In Austria, Norway, Ger- principle; after all, he signed the virulently “It is easy for some to pick on our friends RE
P
many, and Denmark, far-right parties have anti-immigrant welfare bill. But he cut off from the South ... and I don’t like it.” He even ED
been gaining steam for several years now. the political oxygen on which nativism relies. opposed the repeal of bilingual education. CIAT
O
Americans sometimes say that as a coun- In Europe, concerns about immigration Today many pundits consider Bush’s SS
A
try of immigrants we are congenitally im- have always stemmed from widespread support for immigration a matter of politi- NT/
E
mune to the xenophobia that periodically joblessness. And that has fueled racist cal survival—he’s courting a Hispanic vote EM
C
erupts in nations that define themselves in stereotypes of newcomers as lazy and par- Republicans desperately need. But the par- OR
F
ethnic terms. But that’s a historical fallacy— asitic. But in the United States, Clinton has ty by no means shares that calculus. Last EN
S
and I’m not talking about the 1920s. Less successfully boosted employment. The ’90s month, when Bush tried to restore food OM
T
than a decade ago the United States would boom banished those economic anxieties— stamps to some legal immigrants who lost US
C
have fit perfectly into the grim litany and the resulting racial resentments. them in the 1996 welfare bill, most House ND
A
described above. In 1996, Pat Buchanan— Furthermore, by signing welfare reform, Republicans opposed him. ON
America’s Le Pen—won the Republican Clinton destroyed the racist belief that There remains a reservoir of anti- ATI
R
G
presidential primary in New Hampshire. immigrants were receiving handouts for do- immigrant sentiment among the GOP base— MI
M
That summer the GOP adopted a positively ing nothing. Europe’s growing anti- immigrant and in the country at large. But with a pop- S. I
U.
Buchananesque platform declaring that backlash is stoked by the perception that ular, pro-immigration Republican in the D/
E
children born in the United States to foreign left-liberal political elites are allowing immi- White House, nativism has been silenced RE
S
parents should no longer automatically be- grants to play hard-working native Europeans as a political force. The dog has not barked. LE
R
come citizens. And in August Bill Clinton for suckers. But the welfare bill—whatever And the sound is glorious. a HA
C
4 | NEW REPUBLIC

up front
ALTERNATIVE FACTS
Trump’s Fuzzy Border Math
Meet the far-right “think tank” working to legitimize the immigration crackdown.
BY LAURA RESTON
“OH BOY,” DONALD TRUMP exclaimed on the that immigrants are “bringing drugs” and “bringing
campaign trail last summer, as he hoisted a colorful crime” into the United States. After he implemented
poster aloft for a cheering audience in Fort Lauder­ his controversial Muslim ban, CIS provided Trump
dale. “You’re not going to be happy with this!” The with much­needed political cover: Media outlets
poster showed soaring immigration numbers, from NPR to The Washington Post quoted the center’s
highlighted in bright blood­red—a menace stream­ experts defending the policy. Most, in fact, portrayed
ing unchecked into America. CIS as a respectable research institute—after all, the
Those numbers were cooked up at the Center for group boasts that its board of directors includes a
Immigration Studies, a small advocacy operation in mix of “active and retired university professors” and
Washington that emerged, early on in the campaign, “civil rights leaders.”
as Trump’s go­to source for research about migrants CIS, however, is far from a reputable scholarly
and the dangers they pose. Trump repeatedly cited organization. It’s a far­right fringe group that was
CIS studies in his TV ads and speeches, tweeted links
to the group’s research, and used its data to argue ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARTIN ELFMAN
6 | NEW REPUBLIC
founded on d isturbing and discredited ideas about immigration, led by hard-line nativists like Pat Bu- HISTORY
racial inferiority. Today, CIS churns out doctored chanan, and the foundations of wealthy right-wing OF HATE
“studies” that portray an America under siege from donors—from thoroughbred breeder John Olin to The beliefs of CIS
immigrants pouring over our borders, destroying garlic magnate Jaquelin Hume—began funneling founder John Tanton:
our environment, and draining our coffers. millions into CIS. Although May died in 2005,
† Funded “American
The group was the brainchild of John Tanton, a her foundation, Colcom, has donated more than Renaissance,” magazine
Michigan ophthalmologist who developed an interest $76 million to block immigration reform in Congress. that portrays minorities
in eugenics after hearing about “a local pair of sisters CIS provided the ammunition for that fight. as inferior to whites.
who have nine illegitimate children between them,” From a nondescript office building on K Street, its
† Supported the Pioneer
as he wrote in 1969. He believed in the debunked researchers churn out study after study laying out Fund, a supremacist
theories of Thomas Malthus, a nineteenth-century the perils of immigration. Most follow a predictable group that advocates
“race betterment.”
British cleric and scholar who warned that the world pattern: They twist the numbers to show immigrants
would run out of resources if the population were pushing Western civilization to the brink of disaster. † Started Society for
allowed to grow unchecked. For Tanton, “overpopu- One 2008 report blames immigrants for Ameri- Genetic Education “to
condition the public” to
lation” meant people of color. To prevent nonwhites ca’s “burgeoning street gang problem.” Another,
“genetic manipulation.”
from procreating, he endorsed birth control in the published two years later, argues that immigrants
United States and sterilization efforts in Africa. are using up the water in the American Southwest, † Publishes “The Social
And to block what he called a “Latin onslaught” of making them the true threat to the environment. Contract,” which decries
“dysfunctional Third
immigration that threatened to subsume Western Yet another study, published in 2015, asserts that a
World cultures.”
culture, Tanton founded or funded 13 think tanks and whopping 51 percent of immigrant households are
advocacy groups—a constellation of far-right organi- leeching off welfare—even though undocumented
zations that form the core of the modern movement immigrants have been banned from receiving welfare
to limit immigration into the United States. since 1996. CIS’s research methodology is so flimsy
CIS, which Tanton founded in 1985, was spe- that even hard-core conservative organizations have
cifically designed to give the nativist movement condemned it. “Simply put,” the Cato Institute wrote
a semblance of legitimacy. According to a letter of the welfare report, “the CIS study does not com-
buried deep in the bowels of the Bentley Historical pare apples to apples but rather apples to elephants.”
Library in Ann Arbor, in one of 14 boxes of his cor- After Barack Obama took office and agreed to
respondence open to researchers, Tanton imagined welcome thousands of Syrian refugees into the Unit-
“a small think tank” that would be deployed to “wage ed States, CIS joined forces with the radical right,
the war of ideas.” As a serious organization with a circulating links to white nationalist publications like
respectable-sounding name, it would create policy vdare and American Renaissance. The group has also
briefs for conservative candidates and members
of Congress—and provide cover for the lobbying
efforts of its rabidly xenophobic sister organization,
the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Founded on disturbing ideas about racial
founded in 1979. inferiority, CIS churns out doctored “studies” that
In search of funding to launch CIS, Tanton wrote portray an America under siege from immigrants.
to a friend, Cordelia Scaife May, the reclusive heir-
ess to the Mellon family’s banking fortune. An
environmentalist obsessed with protecting birds,
May shared Tanton’s fear that immigrants would embraced thinkers expelled from more polite con-
overrun America’s “native” population. During the servative circles. Last year, CIS began publishing the
1980s, she became obsessed with The Camp of the works of Jason Richwine, a right-wing analyst who
Saints, a controversial French novel about “kinky- was forced to resign from the Heritage Foundation
haired, swarthy-skinned, long-despised” Third World after it discovered that in his Ph.D. dissertation he
immigrants who destroy Western civilization. May had advocated banning Hispanic immigrants because
paid for U.S. distribution of the novel, which depicts their IQs were lower than those of whites. Even
the mayor of New York City being forced to live in conservatives were appalled. “Now CIS is falling
Gracie Mansion with families from Harlem. down the same Alt Right pit that Tanton for years
With funding from May, Tanton founded CIS has denied courting!” the conservative news site
a year before Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping Red State observed. CIS, it seemed, had become too
amnesty bill that offered nearly three million immi- radical even for the mainstream GOP.
grants permanent legal status in the United States. Trump, however, has made CIS respectable. “He
The move sparked a Republican backlash against legitimized them in a very big way,” says Mark Potok,
APRIL 2017 | 7
up front
a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. inauguration crowd in history, or to justify new
Thanks to Trump, the group is now routinely and travel restrictions based on a nonexistent terrorist
respectfully cited by mainstream news outlets as attack in Kentucky, it’s easy to dismiss such claims
a “conservative think tank,” with no mention of as ridiculous. But when anti-immigration screeds
the kind of “alternative facts” it promotes about cooked up by CIS are presented as serious research
immigration. When the president’s advisers go on reports, the lies are harder to spot—and play a far
television to argue that Trump drew the largest greater role in shaping public policy. a
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
The Anti-Protest Backlash
Republican lawmakers across the country are trying to criminalize dissent.
BY CLIO CHANG
IF THERE’S ONE thing that has emboldened anti- of opposition. In Washington, Doug Ericksen—a
Trump activists in the early days of the new state senator who served as Trump’s deputy cam-
administration, it’s the fact that their protests are paign director in the state—has introduced a bill
working. The day after the inauguration, four million that would increase the penalties for anyone causing
women and men took to the streets of Washington an “economic disruption,” such as blocking traffic.
and a host of other cities in what proved to be the Ericksen told The Seattle Times that the legislation
largest demonstration in U.S. history. The day after is specifically designed to punish environmentalists,
Trump signed his Muslim ban, protesters flocked tribal activists, and others who have blocked oil
to airports across the country—and they did so again and coal trains and pipeline projects— actions he
the next day, and the day after that. To date, nearly denounces as “economic terrorism.”
every one of Trump’s major decisions has been GOP lawmakers in other states are pushing similar
greeted by loud and sustained resistance. bills. In Indiana, proposed legislation would empower
The grassroots revolts have proven effective. The police officers to remove protesters obstructing traffic
protests helped prod Trump to walk back part of his “by any means necessary.” In North Dakota, where
travel ban, inspired Democrats to wage long and activists have blocked roadways to protest the Dakota
Access Pipeline, a bill granting immunity from pros-
ecution to any driver who “unintentionally” hits and
kills protesters—a measure detractors took to calling
From Washington to North Carolina, new the “Mow the Protesters Down Bill”—narrowly failed.
laws would impose stiff penalties for And in Minnesota, where Black Lives Matter activists
blocking highways or yelling at politicians. have marched on the Mall of America and shut down
I-94 to protest police shootings, two new bills would
increase the penalties for obstructing highways and
allow cities to sue protesters to recover the cost of
vocal confirmation battles against Betsy DeVos and policing public demonstrations.
Jeff Sessions, and even forced Trump to cancel a trip In North Carolina, protesters seemingly inspired
to a Harley-Davidson plant in Milwaukee after dem- by Game of Thrones followed former Governor Pat
onstrators threatened to greet him at the factory. In McCrory around during inauguration weekend
perhaps the best litmus test for Trump’s discomfort, chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” In response, State
the president took to Twitter to voice his outrage: Senator Daniel Bishop announced that he would
“Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters introduce legislation to make it a crime to “threaten,
are proving the point of the millions of people who intimidate, or retaliate against a present or former
voted to make america great again!” North Carolina official” while they are performing
Now, however, Republican lawmakers in at least their jobs. Bishop views such protests as a dangerous
ten states are working to shut down such shows scourge, rather than a well-established and vital
8 | NEW REPUBLIC