#garrett graff

[justinspoliticalcorner]

‘It’s Time’: Ex-Politico Editor Has 6 Blunt Questions About Trump’s Health

“There’s enough smoke” for the media to ask tougher questions, said Garrett Graff.

Ed Mazza at HuffPost:

Journalist Garrett Graff, a former editor of Politico magazine, said “it’s time” for the press to start asking deeper questions about President Donald Trump’s health.

Graff said his column wasn’t intended to ignite any conspiracy theories so much as to “lay out visible obvious evidence” on several points, including some “curious questions” about the bruised hands the White House has blamed on aspirin use and handshaking.

“There’s reason to believe there’s more to it than that,” he wrote, noting that the bruises appear on both hands, not just the one he uses for greeting people, and that it’s not clear why Trump is taking aspirin given what’s known publicly about his health. But the biggest issue may be the one that has caused a frenzy on social media in recent days: Trump’s decision to stay at the White House for the holiday weekend and remain largely absent from the public eye, with only brief and limited appearances since last Tuesday, including golf outings on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. “Trump takes off for one of his golf resorts the first chance he can nearly every weekend of the year, and yet he’s just choosing to spend an extra-long holiday weekend hanging out at the White House? Why?” he wrote. “Is his medical team wanting to keep him closer to top secure medical facilities?”

He noted other recent pattern changes ― including Aug. 22, when Trump wore a hat and no tie while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, something he almost never does. Everyone who joined him also wore no tie, suggesting some coordination. “At the very least, it would cause me to ask around about what else was going on with Donald Trump on August 22nd?” he wrote. Graff said reporters need to dig deeper. “Put all of this together, and it’s clear that there’s enough smoke coming from the White House to warrant at least a major story in a major outlet investigating whether there’s fire,” he wrote. He added that the same press now facing questions over how it handled questions over former President Joe Biden’s health should be more willing to “dig deeper” now. Read the full report here.

Former Politico editor Garrett Graff wrote a column encouraging the media to take a closer look at Donald Trump’s health issues, similar to how the issued was covered when Joe Biden had them.

See Also:

The Status Kuo (Jay Kuo): So, What’s Up With DJT?

[deadpresidents]

"For the first 117 years of the nation's existence, Presidents never ventured far. Unsure of the legality of being "President" outside the country, the first century of Presidents carefully remained within the nation's borders. William McKinley agreed in 1901 to meet the Mexican President, but on the border of the two countries. It wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt's trip to Panama in 1906 that a President ever traveled internationally -- and he did so as quickly as possible, sprinting aboard a U.S. Navy ship to the Canal Zone and remained out of territorial waters for only ten hours...

FDR's journey by lumbering Pan Am Flying Boat from Miami to Casablanca made him the first President to travel by air, to fly abroad, and the first to set foot in Africa. Ironically, the President flew because the Secret Service and the military deemed it safer than facing the marauding Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic. It was a difficult and time-consuming trip: four legs of flying, three stops, and three days' travel each way. All told, FDR spent nearly ninety hours in the air for a trip that today Royal Air Maroc accomplishes in about eight hours. That journey gave rise a few weeks later to the Army Air Corps' decision that the President should have his own airplane. For the long flight to Yalta in February 1945 to meet Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin as the war wound down, Roosevelt first boarded his four-engine Sacred Cow, a DC-4 aircraft painted standard Army olive drab and heavily modified to include a spacious Presidential suite and an elevator to lift his wheelchair in and out...

[Harry S.] Truman quickly picked up the air travel habit, boarding Sacred Cow just weeks after he took office to fly home to Independence, Missouri -- the first domestic flight in Presidential history. From that moment forward, Presidents seemed to be in near-constant states of travel. Walt Disney offered to design a special insignia for the plane -- a smiling cow with a halo over one horn and an Uncle Sam top hat over the other -- and it began to be bedecked with the flags of the countries it had visited: a total of fifty-one by the time it was retired in July 1947.

When Truman's second plane, a DC-6 named Independence after his hometown, was delivered, the designers at Douglas decked it out with an eagle motif, incorporating the cockpit windows as the bird's eyes, and painted a golden beak on the plane's nose.

As the Cold War deepened, [CIA Director] Allen Dulles pushed [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower to adopt a jet plane -- it was critical, he argued, that the U.S. President be seen leading technological advances -- and the fact that [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev used jet aircraft meant it was time to retire the Presidential propeller planes...

The increasingly advanced and elaborate Presidential planes were decked out with survival gear like parachutes -- always five more than the passengers it carried, in case panicky officials deployed theirs inside the cabin accidentally. When the planes flew over oceans, Navy and Coast Guard ships were stationed in advance every 250 miles on picket duty in case of trouble. Later, as aviation technology advanced, Air Force rescue planes known as "Duck Butts" would accompany the President's plane, stocked with rescue swimmers, life rafts, and medical personnel who could aid survivors if the plane went down at sea."

-- Garrett M. Graff on the early history of air travel by the Presidents and the first dedicated Presidential planes, as well as some fascinating details about security precautions for Presidential flights during the Cold War, via Graff's excellent 2017 book Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), which is one of my favorite books of the past 10 years.

[porterdavis]

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government

Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now

This is exactly how we would cover current US events if they were happening elsewhere.

Makes it a lot easier to understand.

[politiciandirect]

Pundits Weigh In: Robert Mueller Appears Weak, Frail, Confused During Hearing

Pundits Weigh In: Robert Mueller Appears Weak, Frail, Confused During Hearing

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller appeared frail during his testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, sparking speculation from a variety of political sources about his abilities.

President Barack Obama’s former campaign director David Axelrod noted on Twitter that Mueller “does not appear as sharp as he was” during his testimony.

This is delicate to say, but…

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[nprbooks]

Images courtesy of Simon & Schuster

Several years ago, when Garrett Graff was working at Washingtonian magazine, a coworker brought him a lost ID badge that he'd found on the floor of a parking garage.

"It was a government ID for someone from the intelligence community, and he gave it to me since I write about that subject, and he's like, "I figure you can get this back to this guy,' " Graff recalls.

There were driving directions on the back of the ID, so Graff looked it up on Google Maps, and it led him to West Virginia. "The road dead ends into the side of a mountain," he says, "And you can see very clearly these big concrete bunker doors — this little guard shack, chain-link fence, and then this set of concrete bunker doors beyond."

Graff had stumbled onto one of the government bunkers designed to protect U.S. leaders in the event of a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon attack — most of which were built at the outset of the atomic age and throughout the Cold War.

He spoke with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about his new book, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself – While the Rest of Us Die. Find their conversation here.

-- Petra

[deadpresidents]

Can you recommend three history books that you couldn't put down and would be good xmas gifts for a history nut? Doesn't need to be presidents just any history.

I could spend the entire holiday season debating which books to suggest, so I'm just going with the first three books that came to my mind when I considered which books I'd choose if I could magically read them for the very first time again. Anyone would has been following me for a while will have heard me recommend these before because they are among the very best books I've ever read:

•Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924 by Charles Emmerson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) It's difficult to describe this book in a way that illustrates how incredibly interesting and original it is. It's a look at the world as it came out of World War I and slowly tried to repair itself in the Great War's aftermath. But during that period, various personalities start appearing in the story like characters in a gripping novel. Those people end up being many of the leading figures of World War II and that becomes apparent as you read the book, as does the fact that the tense state that the world was in at the time wasn't a time of peace and reconstruction, but an incubation period for what would become an even more horrific world war that was the deadliest military conflict in the history of our species. Those leading characters in Crucible drive the story, not so much because of how extraordinary they became but because of how ordinary they were when they started. Emmerson tells these stories in an extremely creative way, and it makes the 739-page book fly by despite the fact that you will NOT want it to end. Without hesitation, I can confidently say that Crucible (which was published in 2019) is the single best book I've read in the past ten years.

•Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) This doesn't mean that I'm giving my stamp of approval to Israel's long history of targeted assassinations and daring special operations. But this book is an excellent example of top-notch investigative reporting and war journalism by Ronen Bergman, who is still an immensely talented correspondent for the New York Times with deep connections throughout the Middle East. Some of the military and intelligence operations described in this book with shocking detail are absolutely mind-blowing and would seem too far-fetched if you saw them in a movie. Bergman's book gives the reader the perspective of being embedded with forces as they undertake these ridiculously dangerous missions.

•Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett M. Graff (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Speaking of journalists with remarkable connections, in Raven Rock Garrett Graff reveals aspects of the blueprints for America's continuity of government planning that have never been fully detailed. Beginning in the early days of the Cold War, Graff takes us through the creation of top-secret plans to keep the government functioning in case of all sorts of Doomsday scenarios. It's incredible to learn what would be prioritized (and how anything would still function) and where surviving members of the government (or their designated alternates -- which is an even crazier revelation) would run what was left of the United States in case of massive attacks that might decapitate vast sections of federal, state, or local governments. What should seem somewhat reassuring -- the fact that the government would continue to function and serve survivors, no matter what -- is frightening when Graff reveals systems that raise far more questions than it delivers answers. It even raises questions about aspects of the shadow federal government that existed during the Cold War (just in case). In some ways and for many reasons, the book is actually pretty frightening. (You'll probably start worrying about the records the U.S. Postal Service keeps about you considering all of the potential uses the government considered using it for in case of a widespread nuclear attack with massive numbers of casualties.) But it's also incredibly interesting and full of amazing details about secrets that I guarantee you'll want to share with people after you read the book. Raven Rock is right behind Crucible when it comes to the very best books of the past decade.

[deadpresidents]

Documents Shed Light on Secret U.S. Plans for Apocalyptic Scenarios

Dating back to 1950s preparations for nuclear war and revised after the Sept. 11 attacks, the presidential directives are not shown to Congress.

For a real in-depth look at some of the wild scenarios and scary situations that the government planned for during (and after) the Cold War, check out Garrett Graff’s Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die (BOOK | KINDLE). Some of the succession plans and directives in case of national emergencies are frightening when you start to understand that if the government has planned for these things, they are seemingly capable of doing them. Also, most of the succession plans end up creating more problems and questions and logistical nightmares than existed before them because there are a crazy amount of departmental labyrinths in the Executive Branch.

[deadpresidents]

‘I’m Absolutely Expecting Him to Do Something Weird’: How Trump Could End His Presidency

Presidents typically reserve their most controversial decisions for their last weeks in office. Imagine what that could mean for Trump.