Three Books from Trump Insiders

While Michael Wolff's two extremely aggressive books about the Trump White House are well known, this summer I breezed through three books by Trump insiders.

• George Sorial, a Trump organization lawyer and executive, produced "The Real Deal: My Decade Fighting Battles and Winning Wars with Trump" in June 2019.   
• Anthony Scaramucci, a Harvard Law grad and Wall Street executive who was Communications Director briefly in August 2017. Produced "Trump: The Blue Collar President" in October 2018.  
• Chris Christie produced "Let Me Finish" in January 2019. 

Some points from Let Me Finish.   

Christie frequently and bitterly disagrees with Steve Bannon's descriptions of events (which figure prominently in Michael Wolff books).   Christie recounts a statement of Bannon and adds, "That flatly never happened" or similar remarks.   Here is the story of the elaborate Transition Planning work - "two dozen three ring binders" - that were tossed the day after the election.   Instead, seemingly random interviewers were summoned at odd intervals to Trump's New Jersey estate.

Christie would have taken Chief of Staff in the new White House; DOJ was locked down by Jeff Sessions who long before had endorsed Trump in the first hours when it became possible.   However, he felt railroaded out by Kushner and Bannon.   This was a second slam-down, the first having being the transition plan.

There is an interesting story that Christie was dangled, and would have taken, head of the Republic National Committee, but this proved to be another bait and switch that really p--d him off and he couldn't take that gang any more.

He talks about his early strong interest in opioid treatment programs, and that he was trying to wrangle $300M out of New Jersey health plans (Horizon BCBS) for this in 2017, leading to a budget shutdown and the infamous picture of him on the empty beach. 

Christie is quite proud of his rule as chairman of an Opioid Policy commission that produced an elaborate roadmap report in November 2017. 

See Christie on Bill Maher, February 2019, here.
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The Scaramucci book was entertaining; I listened to most of it as an audiobook.   He had written several books before this one and he has had an interesting career up to his current age 55.  Scaramucci was a working-class Long Island kid who worked himself up to Harvard Law and Goldman Sachs and later started his own hedge fund.  He says he reads 60 books a year (1800 in 30 years.) Tidbit: he likes audiobooks himself. 

Scaramucci's book is clearly an update of his prior "Hopping Over the Rabbitt Hole," which describes his business career and learnings up to 2016.  Publication date October, 2016.  His "Trump" book from late 2018 reprises (simply copies) large swaths of his prior autobiography while appending several chapters on the 2016 campaign and the August 2017 White House adventure.   

Both Christie and Scaramucci detest Bannon.  For more on Bannon, see the recent documentary The Brink (here, here).

The Soriol book was a little too hagiographic to be sustaining, but an easy skim-through.  Or pass on the book, and invest an hour in the podcast/interview at CSPAN BookTV "After Words" from June 2019 (online here). 

Soriol's book is the only one that prominently lists a co-author on its cover; Christie's book lists a co-author in fine print.

All three books available as audiobooks; Christie and Scaramucci narrate themselves.

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The Michael Wolff books are #1, Fire and Fury (January 2018), and #2,  Siege:Trump Under Fire (June 2019).

CMS/HHS References to President Trump's Leadership

Recently, I ran across a number of HHS/CMS press releases or quotations specifically praising President Trump's vision and leadership, and I wondered how this compared to the Obama era.

See for example:

“Hospitals would be required to post all their payer-specific negotiated rates, which are the prices actually paid by insurers,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said on a conference call with reporters. “Hospital pricing has been a mystery, but thanks to the leadership of President Trump, those days are over.”

At: MedCityNews, July 29, 2019, here.

Similarly, in a recent speech to the National Kidney Foundation, Secr. Azar remarked, "President Trump has the kind of ambition we need to deliver much better [health] care for Americans, even if it means bold change."

Similarly, in an August 2019 press released regarding a National Coverage Determination on CAR-T therapy, "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Azar, finalized the decision to cover FDA-approved Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell, or “CAR T-cell” therapy, which is a form of cancer treatment..."  (Here; my regular business blog on this news, here.)

Once in a while this may be OK, but if it ever becomes mandatory in each press release, it would be a little eerie (sort of like, "Thanks to Comrade Stalin's leadership, the wheat crop has increased by 2%.")

The August 2, 2019 Press Release re: Inpatient Final Rulemaking

For years, CMS has released an inpatient final rule every August.   The press release with the August 2019 edition is titled, "Trump Administration Finalizes Policies to Advance Rural Health and Medical Innovation."

The opening sentence begins, "Today, under the leadership of President Trump, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized policy changes to spur competition and innovation..."  The second paragraph begins, "“The Trump Administration is providing relief to rural communities and addressing payment policies that have disadvantaged rural hospitals, making it harder for them to stay open and provide care to the one in five Americans living in rural areas,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma."

Continuing, "President Trump is strengthening Medicare by clearing the way for Medicare beneficiaries to access the same transformative technologies and treatment options emerging in the private market,” [added] Administrator Verma.  That's four citations to "Trump" in just one routine CMS press release, including the title.


Searching CMS.gov

I used the built-in search function on the CMS website to search for citations to Trump, and there were 101 (that's 40 per year).   Searching for Obama, there are 270 (that's 33 per year).  But wait.  Large numbers of the Trump citations are from public comments on rulemaking where "trump" is used as a verb (rule A trumps rule B), so at least with this simple quantitative measure, Trump occurs less at HHS than Obama, although the Trump citations are sometimes more bold and colorful and memorable, as in the Verma quote above.

Among three Federal proposed rules released this week (for OPPS, PFS, and ESRD/DME), only the PFS rule contains the word Trump, and only once:

On October 26, 2017, Acting Health and Human Services Secretary, Eric D. Hargan declared a nationwide public health emergency on the opioid crisis as requested by President Donald Trump. This public health emergency was renewed by Secretary Alex M. Azar II on January 24, 2018, April 24, 2018, July 23, 2018, and October 21, 2018, January 17, 2019 and most recently, on April 19, 2019. 

A few quirks here.  This implies that President Trump himself can't declare a public health emergency (rather he requests that this be done by Secr. Hargan), and once a public health emergency is declared, it seems to have to be "renewed" at odd intervals every few months.

"President Donald Trump" vs "President Trump"

The Federal Register stylebook isn't consistent on this topic.  Official publications variably name his on first mention as either "President Trump" or as "President Donald Trump."  For example, in contrast to the full-name quote above, "President Trump" without first name occurs (but twice) in e.g. "Nondiscrimination in Health and Health Education Programs," May 2019 (4153-01-P).

CMS Press Release Practices Vary

Whereas an NCD press release (CAR-T NCD) from CMS in August 2019 referred to the impact of both President Trump and Secretary's Azar's leadership, a nearly-contemporary CMS press release about an NCD for acupuncture referred to neither man (here).   Thus, the CMS press room stylebook allows flexibility.

Tweetworld and Memory of a Flea

There is the famous question, "Did you stop beating your wife?" which is bad whether answered yes or no.  The Trump tweet here was like that:  You should go back to your country, if you hate it here and would be happier in your country.  That has a logical scaffold like saying, If you don't like tomato soup, don't order tomato soup.  Except it rings the bell of, Go Back To Your Country louder than anything else. 

We should disallow the politics and rhetoric of free-wheeling opposite logic.  DJT loudly decried the failing American system when running for President as a True Patriot- but he wasn't sent back to Scotland or Germany.  When someone else running for president critiques the status quo, now the new rule is, it's unpatriotic.   (And it's infinite: When Obama plays golf, it's horrible; when DJT plays golf, it's wonderful). 

It's this underlying flip flop of logic and frame that is supposed to be revolting to listeners, whether in 1719 or 2019, but in a Tweetworld, it isn't.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/us/politics/trump-tweet-house-vote.html

German Pop Culture: Marie Gruber, from East Germany to Babylon Berlin

German actress Marie Gruber died in February 2018 of lung cancer after a short illness.  Here, here.

The 62-year old character actress had just finished a fine supporting character actor role as the depressive wife of devilish Police Commissioner Bruno Wolter in the 16-part series Babylon Berlin (Netflix). 

American audiences might recognize her from a brief cameo role as the beleaguered next-door neighbor in Lives of Others.   However, she had an extensive resume' including television series - here.

I gather from obits that she came to fame for her role in a 1991 situation comedy GO TRABI GO, in which a family of newly-released East Germans bravely take their rickety Trabant on a trip across the fallen Iron Curtain to Italy.

It's sounds like the communist bloc version of Chevy Chase's earlier European Vacation (1985) which itself had echoes of Jackie Gleason's 1969 Don't Drink the Water.  GTG pays homage to Goethe's "Italian Journey" (published 1816; from a trip 1786; here.)   They carry around an old copy of Italian Journey the whole trip.

I've seen both Babylon Berlin and Lives of Others several times.   Much excitement when today's mail brought a used DVD copy of GO TRABI GO (German; no subtitles; via Amazon) to watch on a future airplane trip.

Go Trabi Go

Lives of Others

Babylon Berlin

My fan blog on Babylon Berlin, here.

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A few other actor notes.

Actor Peter Kurth, who played Commissioner Wolter in Babylon Berlin (2017; photo above with Marie Gruber) played a small role in Goodbye Lenin also (2004), as the manager at a satellite TV company XTV ["Chef"].   Goodbye Lenin was a hit, with budget $6M and gross $80M.  For an academic article on Ostalgie, here.

Coffee in Berlin had iconic character actor, elderly Michael Gwisdek, who appears as a washed-up grumpy old drunk in Coffee in Berlin (2014) [as Friedrich], reprising his role in Goodbye Lenin (2004) [as Klapprath].

Books: Some New Views of the US Constitution; German Media

Several very interesting-sounding new books on the US Constitution.

• The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era
• Jonathan Gienapp, Stanford
• Amazon here.  Kindle $23, Hardcover $24.
• Our constitution had no precedent and was, in many ways, a maddeningly vague document.  We still see its gaps today (if the House impeaches, the Senate holds a trial; if the President nominates, the Senate must give "advice and consent" -- but neither has any timeline.  "How about never? Is never good for you?"
• In the decades following its creation, innumerable gaps, holes, and ambiguities in the Constitution had to be filled by conflict, judgement, or creation of precedent.
• The Cult of the Constitution.
• Mary Anne Franks,Professor of Law, University of Miami.
• Amazon here.  Kindle $18, Hardcover $19.
• The absolutism of the Constitution - absolute gun rights, free speech, freedom of religiion, framed with text like "Congress shall make no law..." - obviously conflicts with common sense.   (Your religion doesn't get you out of taxes).   Franks sees the Right making a fetish of guns, but, the Left making a fetish of speech.  
• Amazon: " The Cult of the Constitution lays bare the dark, antidemocratic consequences of constitutional fundamentalism and urges readers to take the Constitution seriously, not selectively."  
• "In this controversial and provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constitutional fidelity and constitutional fundamentalism."

On other topics:

• News From Germany: Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945.
• Heidi J.S. Tworek. Asst Prof. History, UBC
• Harvard Historical Studies.
• Amazon here.  Kindle $16, Hardcover $12.
• Amazon:  "Heidi Tworek’s innovative history reveals how, across two devastating wars, Germany attempted to build a powerful communication empire—and how the Nazis manipulated the news to rise to dominance in Europe and further their global agenda. When the news became a form of international power, it changed the course of history."
• Contrast to:
• Medien im Natioinalsozialmus [German only]
• Amazon.de here.  Harcover only, 42 Euros.
• Bernd Heidenreich and Sonke Neitzel
• Amazon:   "An introduction to the media history of National Socialism. The role of the media in the Third Reich has still received too little attention, although their importance for the establishment and stabilization of the Nazi dictatorship can hardly be overestimated. Within a few years, the National Socialists fundamentally restructured the media and made it one of their central instruments of governance."
• ...I've read elsewhere recently that the Weimar government invested much control over the media in the government, to avoid growth of Communists and Nazis.  However, once the Nazis took over, they wielded the same laws controlling the media that Weimar predecessors had.
• ...On a trip to Berlin in June 2019, there was an exhibit about democracy and threats to democracy at the German Historical Museum (DHM).   One poster said:  "Democracy protects free speech.  We protect democracy."  It was a poster for the civil police.

Noticed also:

• Rule and Ruin: Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
• Geoffrey Kabaservice.  Oxford Press, 2012.
• Amazon here.  Kindle $9, Audio $35, Harcover $2, Paperback $3.
• See also last year's book, The Polarizers, by Sam Rosenfeld.  Here.  Kindle $10, Hardcover $21.

Weimar and Bauhaus: 100 Years Each.

 

It's easy to find a lot of material this year about Weimar, Bauhaus, or both, just a few listed here.

BauHaus Opens New Museum - In Weimar.

There's a new Bauhaus museum in Weimar itself.  Don't get confused - there's also a Bauhaus institute/center right in Berlin (a half-mile west of the Philharmonic), there's the original Bauhaus School in Dessau, and in Fall 2019 Dessau opens an even newer Bauhaus museum of its own.*

Dessau is about 80 miles south of Berlin, Weimar about 180. Trains for Weimar change in Erfurt, which is on a major rail line.  Dessau and Weimar are respectively north and south of Leipzig (120 miles south of Berlin).

Bauhaus at Getty Center

In Los Angeles, Getty Center runs a big exhibit looking back at Bauhaus, June to October 2019.  Here.

Not directly Bauhaus, but see 1920s landmark Schindler House in Los Angeles also.  Near Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.   Website here.  Also, a Neutra house in Silver Lake can be visited on Saturdays, here.

Six Brit Videos About Weimar

London Philharmonic is having a series of concerts and lectures related to Weimar, here, under the banner, Bittersweet Metropolis.   Here.  Something you can access from a distance, six ten to fifteen minute videos about the Weimar era, free at Youtube, here.  This link should get you into the set of six videos, Youtube.

Weimar History - At Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin

The DHM in Berlin, part of Museum Island, is in some ways equivalent to the Smithsonian.  In the last few years I've seen some amazing exhibits of cultural history there - on immigration to Germany; on Germany colonies in Africa in the 1890s.  See a big exhibit this year on Weimar politics and history at DHM.  Titled, Weimar: Essence and Value of Democracy.  Here,  here.  It runs to September 2019.  PDF here (mixed German/English).  It looks like there is also a broader exhibit titled, Democracy 2019, running on the same calendar.

DHM benefits enormously from a large multi-story exhibit behind the historical building on Unter der Linden [aka Zeughaus].  The new wing was completed by IM Pei in 2003.


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Berlin reminder: Zeughaus is the large DHM building.  A tiny one-story historical building next to it is Neue Wache,  which is a war memorial with a Kollwitz statue.

Brecht and 3 Penny Opera are inseparable from the collapse of Weimar.  There was a terrific 2018 German movie about making 3PO into a film around 1930, but sadly it never played in the US and the DVD has no English subtitles.  Here.

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That's Bauhaus Berlin, Bauhaus Weimar (new museum), Bauhaus Dessau (classic buildings), Bauhaus Dessau 2.0 (upcoming new museum), and there's also a Bauhaus Museum in Tel Aviv.

Several Recent PBS Documentaries (April/May 2019)

Several surprisingly memorable PBS documentaries in the last several weeks.

The most prominent was RECONSTRUCTION: America After the Civil War, by Harvard's Henry Louis Gates.  Two parts, totaling four hours.   Here, here.   Gates has a companion book.   See also the short standard history of Reconstruction, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner, who is interviewed in the documentary.   Unlike Foner's book, the documentary tracers the  after-effects of Reconstruction and its collapse into the 1920s and 1930s.

By biggest take-home lesson was that this decade 1865-1875 is the centerpiece of many examples that American history has mostly been seriously crazy.  The first decade was crazy (to start with, nobody knew how the Constitution worked; see Jonathan Giepnap's new book The Second Creation).   The War of 1812 was crazy; so was the subsequent Jackson era.  The 1840s, 1850s were crazy (there were about six initiatives for presidential impeachment prior to Andrew Johnson; see Giepnap).  There were many crazy years of lead-up to the Civil War.  (Even the months before the war were crazy.   We forget that a number of Southern states seceded immediately after Lincoln's November election, under President Buchanan, and long before Ft. Sumter; and that in part, the South thought it would be a very economically successful country due to the world demand for cotton - more like the secession of Quebec or Catalonia if they were half of Canada or Spain.)

The Civil War was horrible and then each several-year period from 1865 to 1880 were rich in a some new kind of crazy.  By the great depression of the early 1890s we were into the labor/capital period of crazy.  No need to mention the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s.  (For refreshers on 60s-crazy, see the trifecta of HBO's Path to War with Michael Gambon as LBJ, Fog of War about McNamara, and MLK, King In the Wilderness from HBO last year.)

KOREA: The Never Ending War, here, was one I tivo'd but wasn't sure I would ever watch.  It was gripping.   Korea was invaded by Japan in 1910, and treated very badly, becoming much worse during the WW2.  When WW2 was over and Japan defeated, there was no turnkey government to restore, so the Allies divided Korea at the 38th parallel, US and Russian.  By the late 40s, tensions were very high and US under MacCarthur invaded North(ern) Korea almost to the China border.  However, they were stopped by a horrific winter and by the early 50s a stalemate returned at the 38th parallel.  However, both sides bombed the other into oblivion by the time a truce was declared in 1953.   In the meantime, Truman had fired MacArthur - who received a hero's welcome in the US while Truman had a record low 22% approval rating.   In the 50s, North Korea rebuilt faster than South Korea, but South Korea caught up and sped ahead.  Two hours.

TRUMP's TRADE WAR (here) is a misleadingly-titled episode of Frontline that I almost didn't watch.  I would have missed alot.  It's really about the last 20 years of political, business, and strategic relationships with China, how much is going on now (add cyberwar and DJT), and what may happen next.  This was about the most interesting single hour of television I've seen in a long time.

Two interesting documentaries about important women.

See IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Queen Elizabeth II, a new one hour documentary reviewing her entire life in a concise hour.  This is a small PBS series I haven't noticed before (another subject is Jim Henson, another Muhammed Ali.)    Here. 

American Experience has a one hour documentary on Emma Goldman, 1869-1940, a Russian immigrant in the 1880s with a prolific career as a New York-based socialist and activist until her expulsion from the US - and back to wartime Russian - in 1918.   Here.

I haven't checked which ones stream free; while PBS has gotten fussier about streaming free video, most of these are available for rental on Amazon for no more than a couple dollars.  Some might be available video-on-demand on your cable tv service.