The president’s $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs is facing criticism from his fellow Republicans, even as his own Agriculture Secretary laments that the payouts won’t be enough to contain the damage.

From Macbeth:

Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enough about you; here you’ll sweat for ’t.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Trump’s trade war hobby’s been unhelpful to the zone of vehement folks who – on no fence – elect him.

He then uses our checkbook to fix the kink in a hokey plan to make America great again yet.

From The Tempest:

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

A Russian agent swiftly scammed the below-IQ NRA.

On Thursday, the AP reported that a number of immigrants who joined the US military as part of a special program are being abruptly discharged.

The program is called MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to National Interest) and it allows for non-citizens to enter our armed services if they fill gaps that we urgently need, such as foreign languages or medical skills. In the process, they may become citizens. It sounds like a win-win to me, and indeed the program has been highly successful, enjoying support from both sides of the aisle.

But as the New York Times describes it, some of these valuable specialists are now “being cut even as the Army has been unable to meet its 2018 recruiting goals.” Some are even in danger of being deported.

Margaret Stock, the former West Point law professor who won a MacArthur fellowship for, among other things, leading the development of the MAVNI program, estimated in September that hundreds of recruits could be affected by this policy shift:

“It’s a dumpster fire ruining people’s lives. The magnitude of incompetence is beyond belief,” she said. “We have a war going on. We need these people.”

These are not Trump’s rapists and murderers pouring in from Mexico. They are not drug runners smuggling contraband from Central America. They are not even the dangerous PG-13 gang members who are still being held in cages at the border.  These are people who are here legally, who we asked to be here, and who trusted our word that they would be protected.

All of the pretenses for why we need aggressive immigration reform have now been dropped.  

From Coriolanus:

Have the power still
To banish your defenders

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

They prove unfit leaders who ban the soldiers.

It’s been a rough week for us liberals, and there’s a lot going on in the county right now. But for today’s anagram, I want to focus in on just one thing that I think deserves more attention than it has been getting. We’ve all heard about the children in cages, but I want to focus on the process that makes it possible to put children in cages without losing your political supporters or facing consequences of any kind.

Last Friday, the Republican president held a press event featuring families of the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He calls them “Angel Families,” which is a term coined by him to describe this very specific and highly selected group of people.

Now, I was brought up Jewish, and in my religious education, we learned how scapegoating was used to turn European populations against the Jewish people during the Diaspora, most notably in Nazi Germany. This was something we were always taught to be on the lookout for, but I honestly never thought I’d see it to this degree in America during my own lifetime.

Trump’s display last Friday was not only disgusting, but frighteningly dangerous. I certainly empathize with the genuine grief of the families, but parading them up on stage to exploit that grief for cynical propaganda is an abomination. You could cherry-pick victims of any group and put their families on the dais. What if the families were selected because they had lost their loved ones at the hands of black people? Or Christian fundamentalists? Police officers? How about families of people who were killed at Walt Disney World?

Imagine how you might be made to feel if the president gathered up the families of all of the people who died in vending machine accidents. (It’s a thing; the stuff doesn’t come out, they shake the machine, and it falls on them.) Family member after family member gets up to share how their lives have been torn apart by loved ones lost to vending machines. Given enough time, you might come to feel that vending machines are an existential menace, one that must be immediately addressed with urgency and ruthlessness. Using this technique to vilify an entire class of people should earn you a special place in hell.

The matter has been well researched. Immigrants (both documented and undocumented) commit crimes at a lower rate than the native born. As Paul Krugman points out, this is not a poor solution to a pressing issue; it’s an entirely manufactured issue:

What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.

This is where checks and balances are supposed to kick in, but the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and are currently abrogating that responsibility. We can all agree that stoking hatred toward minorities is not what America is supposed to be about, but we should also remember that it is not even what the Republican party is supposed to be about. Take a look at the 1980 Republican primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The two future Republican presidents are asked about illegal immigration and both respond with empathy and compassion.

Seriously, what the hell happened to you guys? Even as late as the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was criticized for being too tough on immigration from all sides (even from Trump!). Republican pundits were warning that the 2016 candidate had to be better on the issue or Latino voters would bury them. And look at what happened. Republican voters went all in for the candidate spewing the most vile racist rhetoric. This is what they voted for, and Trump is happy to fulfill the insane promises he made to them. Krugman (again) puts it best:

On the other side, the party’s base really does love Trump, not for his policies, but for the performative cruelty he exhibits toward racial minorities and the way he sticks his thumb in the eyes of “elites.” So any Republican politician who takes a stand on behalf of what we used to think were fundamental American values is at high risk of losing his or her next primary. And as far as we can tell, there is not a single elected Republican willing to take that risk, no matter what Trump does.

We knew what Trump was when he was elected. But to be honest, I thought there would be more Republicans of conscience to keep him in check. Once this is all over, and it will end eventually, I think it will be a long time before the Republican party will be able to regain its credibility.

And I know this moral outrage is hardly unique to my own personal sensibilities. Many, many people are saying the exact same things. But it was important to me that I be one of them. And now that I have, let’s get back to the real business of this website and do a Shakespeare anagram.

Today’s selection is from a well-circulated passage that Shakespeare wrote for Sir Thomas More. I’m only going to anagram the end because the shorter anagrams are harder and therefore (in my mind) more impressive. But I’m also including a video of the speech in its entirety, because it speaks to the present moment as well as anything does, and once again, Shakespeare reminds us of what it means to be human.

From Sir Thomas More:

This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

This insanity!

Time in cages? To shun norms? Deny truth?

Ah ha! Russia.

From Richard II:

O! but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

They try to disrespect a hero yet.

McCain wants an honorable funeral, with Presidents Bush and Obama there to keynote.

Yet, gee, he did not invite ferret Trump, whether or not he has any grief.

From Julius Caesar:

When could they say, till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

My low talk: blatant corruption scandals oft went down as he madly helmed the White House.

So President Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Andrew McCabe, the acting director of the FBI.

McCabe was set to retire anyway, but the administration chose to fire him so he wouldn’t get his full pension.

The president then crowed about the firing in a tweet.

Ranting and raving about new lows for this administration can get tiring after a while. Maybe that’s the point. Fortunately, I am constitutionally empowered to anagram passages from Shakespeare to express my disapproval, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I chose the speech from Richard III where Hastings laments his capricious treatment by Richard. Richard has sentenced him to death for a transparently minor offense, when the real reason is that Hastings doesn’t support Richard to become king. Hastings notes the dangers faced by others in the circle who may be enjoying his misfortunes thinking they’re safe.

From Richard III:

I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee
That ever wretched age hath look’d upon.
Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head:
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Trump, he hotly tweets: McCabe, he led the FBI. He’ll be fired home.

He’s married to a Democrat, so Trump kept heatedly asking how he voted as a loyalty oath theme.

Oh, hell.

That’s actually true.

Oh, hell.

From Sir Thomas More:

Nay, it has infected it with the palsey; for these bastards of dung, as you know they grow in dung, have infected us, and it is our infection will make the city shake, which partly comes through the eating of parsnips.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

President Trump, a dotard, cynically described fifty non-white nations as “shithole countries.” He speaks guff awkwardly without thinking, yet this one’s no gaffe.

Yeah, enough.

We have to impeach this racist thug.

What the great ones tweet, the less will anagram of.

From Twelfth Night:

Why, thou sayest well. I do now remember a saying, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Hell, I went from kooky wannabe to well-deified show boss to the White House (on my first shot)! Ha, me! Why, I’m a stable genius!

Let’s call it the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and President Hyde.

It all started last weekend, when a coalition of white supremacist organizations staged a demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. The idea was that the different alt-right factions, including the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, could come together and present a unified front for nationalism and racial purity. With swastika flags, burning torches, and chants such as “Jews will not replace us,” they presented an unambiguous message of anger and hate. Counter-protesters showed up to resist their message, and one particularly disturbed individual drove his car into them, injuring many, and killing Heather Heyer, age 32.

Before we go on, it should be clear that this is not in any way a left vs. right thing. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democratic ideology. Everyone in America should be against this, regardless of how you feel about the tax code or health care reform. And indeed, many prominent Republicans immediately spoke out against this protest and its message of hate. We should expect no less.

But on Saturday, as the events were still unfolding, President Trump came out to read a prepared statement, in which he stated that “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.” He then stopped reading, looked up, and added “on many sides… on many sides.”

Deflection is a common rhetorical technique, used by politicians and their supporters, mainly when they are losing the argument and want to shift the focus of the conversation. Push a Trump supporter (or President Trump himself) too far, and you’ll get an earful of Benghazi or Hillary’s e-mails. And, yes, we do it too when our back is against the wall. (Sure, Obama used drones, but Bush did it too!)

So there’s nothing unusual about deflection, and it’s easy to call it out when it happens. But why on earth would President Trump use such a technique, or any technique at all, to defend the white supremacists? Sure, you can use deflection to shift focus onto the counter-protesters if you want to. But why? It only makes sense if you see the alt-right as “your side.” Is that what the President was signaling?

Needless to say, many were left feeling unsatisfied with this statement on Saturday. Pushback against his comments became so ubiquitous that he was forced to issue another statement last Monday. This time, he said all of the things a President is supposed to say, decrying racism as evil, and naming the various hate groups as well as the name of the woman who died in the protest. Some said he looked like a hostage being forced to read a statement against his will. Others criticized him for not speaking out sooner. But he said everything we asked him to say, and if he had left it there, the issue would have been closed.

He did not leave it there.

The next day, he was making an announcement about infrastructure. But when he took questions, they were not about infrastructure. This time, the President, finally freed from the oppressive shackles of prepared statements written by his more thoughtful policy advisors, doubled down on his deflection away from the white supremacists. He never explicitly said both sides were equally to blame, but that seemed to be his attitude. He coined the term “alt-left” as though people who want to raise the minimum wage and implement a single-payer healthcare system were on the same moral plane as Nazis. He also implied that it was the counter-protestors who were physically attacking the alt-right, when all of the evidence I’ve seen is to the contrary. He also felt the need to point out that the white supremacists had a permit, while the counter-protesters did not. (Seriously, he said that.) This was a new low for the Trump presidency, and that’s no easy bar to clear.

But then, this past Monday, he gave an address laying out a foreboding agenda in Afghanistan. Content aside, he was calmly reading from the teleprompter, just like a real big-boy president. He was measured, dignified, and – dare I say it – uncharacteristically presidential. He began with an eloquent call for unity against division. Had he not already relinquished all moral authority to make such a statement, it would have been beautiful. And when he talked about Afghanistan, he projected strength and resolve. There was the occasional reference to the previous administration’s blame and more than a little unearned braggadocio, but he didn’t trip over the podium or light himself on fire, and I caught myself hoping to see more of this president moving forward.

It took exactly one day to burst that bubble. At a campaign rally (!) in Arizona on Tuesday, he gave a completely unhinged performance, telling an alternate-universe version of the story above, and attacking the media as fake news outlets out to get him personally.

At the moment, it feels like we have two presidents, and when he speaks, we don’t know which one we’re going to get. But let’s not be under any illusions about which one is the @realDonaldTrump.

From Twelfth Night:

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons;
A natural perspective, that is, and is not!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

I see two presidents: one, a non-factual peevish scab; another can pivot, read notation.