Grifter-in-Chief

President-elect Donald Trump is continuing his war with the mainstream media, working the refs at an off-the-record meeting with about 30 top TV executives and anchors yesterday that was punctuated by him yelling at them for being “dishonest, deceitful liars,” according to this report from the New York Post’s Emily Smith and Daniel Halper.

David Remnick, editor in chief of The New Yorker, also spoke to people who attended that meeting and he reports, one participant says Trump “is the same kind of blustering, bluffing blowhard as he was during the campaign.” Another participant at the meeting told Remnick that Trump’s behavior was “totally inappropriate” and “fucking outrageous.” Remnick adds, “Participants said that Trump did not seem entirely rational about his criticism of the media, nor did he appear any more informed about policy than he had been during the campaign. “

He also continued to single out the New York Times for Twitter abuse, posting this morning that he “cancelled today’s meeting with the failing ‪@nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment.”

New York Times political reporter Jonathan Mahler tweets in response: “NYT did not try to change ground rules. Trump did, asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which NYT refused.” As of this writing, the meeting was back on for today.

The evidence of Trump using his election to benefit his business enterprises continues to mount, with this story by Danny Hakim and Eric Lipton of the New York Times describing his pressing British politician Nigel Farage to oppose offshore wind farms that may harm the view from one of his Scottish golf courses, and Argentine media reporting, per Josh Marshall and Catherine Thompson of Talking Points Memo, that he asked the president of Argentina to speed the approval of a building project he is involved in in Buenos Aires.

“Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world.Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!” That’s President-elect Trump, tweeting last night about the conflict of interest issue.

Remember when Dick Cheney promised, before the 2000 election had even happened, to forfeit his stock options in Halliburton, the oil company he used to run? “In order to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, I am fully prepared to forfeit any options that have not vested by the time I assume office,” Cheney said in a statement in September 2000. Ah, good times.

Two hundred or so white American neo-Nazis held a public meeting in Washington D.C. to revel in Donald Trump’s victory, complete with Nazi salutes.

The National Holocaust Museum condemned the meeting in a rare public statement, declaring “The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.”

A group of researchers led by Joan Donovan of UCLA’s Participation Lab have been studying how white supremacists discuss current events online, and in this essay they describe how the “white supremacy wish lists” that are popping up on message boards map to Trump’s 100-day plan for his administration. While there are differences, the overlaps on immigration, climate, criminal justice, women’s rights, and political corruption are chilling.

“Warn Americans about Trump too early, and most Americans will believe that you are overreacting. Warn Americans about Trump too late, and it’s too late. The challenge to those worried about Trump’s threat to liberal democracy is to figure out the best moment to sound the alarm.” That’s Daniel Drezner writing in the Washington Post about the current moment. Handwringing much?

It looks like net neutrality will be on the chopping block, if the people advising the Trump transition on the FCC are any guide, Devin Coldewey writes for TechCrunch.

Flunking out of college? Writing on the Daily News op-ed page, political science professors Jeffrey Tulis, Sanford Levinson and Jeremy Suri call on the Electoral College to reject Trump and pick a “highly qualified Republican who respects our noble traditions, values and laws.” Citing Framer Alexander Hamilton, they argue:

Instead of asking Republican electors to vote for Hillary Clinton, we suggest that Democrats organize electors from a state Clinton won to vote for someone else, in order to persuade Republican electors in other states to do the same. Democrats must show that they are not trying to push Clinton into the presidency (despite her victory in the popular vote), but acting to find a qualified alternative to Trump. That is the only goal that can unite Democrats and Republicans.

Some Democratic Electors are trying to lobby their Republican counterparts to pick someone other than Trump, Kyle Cheney reports for Politico. A few Republican Electors are also expressing discomfort with Trump, he reports.

My view: I think the notion of pressing Electors to defy their state’s vote is playing with fire. Democrats wanted Trump to accept the result of the election, back when the fear was that he would reject a loss. Remember? If the country is to be unified against Trumpism, that can only happen through a democratic process, not through a tiny group of people acting like they know better. A candidate selected by a runaway Electoral College will have very little political legitimacy. If such a thing happens, it’s probably the beginning of the end of us resolving issues through democratic processes like voting. And then, remember, the other side has more guns.

What is civic tech now? Civicist contributor Hollie Russon Gilman reflects on the election and says that now more than ever, we need to rebuild our civic muscles.

Civic Hall member Erin Mazursky, the founder of Rhize, argues that “The rules have changed” and it’s time for a movement of movements in the United States.

Civic Hall civic imagination fellow Andrew Slack has started The Hamilton Alliance to rally the fandom behind the hugely popular show in defense of multicultural democracy, building on the massive online response to Trump’s trolling of the show’s cast for addressing Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who attended a showing a few days ago.

If you are steeling yourself for some difficult Thanksgiving conversations, read this new “Talking Trump” Thanksgiving field guide by Civic Hall member Danielle Tomson. It’s drawn from a workshop she led in October where members discussed the challenges they were facing talking with their relatives.

Former government intelligence official Yael Eisenstat reflects on the current wave of anti-government sentiment in America and ponders what her peers who are still serving in government must be feeling, and then makes a plea to her fellow citizens: “When the public uses the government as a punching bag, who will be left to fight for you?” She writes:

I cannot make a plea to our men and women in government to stay, serve, ensure continuity and push for a diverse set of opinions — even though I know our country’s future depends on them — when I do not know that I could do so myself. But I can make a plea to the rest of America to respect their choices — whether to serve under Trump or to resign — to be thankful that so many people continue to work long hours for our country, even if they do not agree with half the voters and often do not feel valued by many of you.

I’m coming to this piece by Bill Sourour late, but he’s written an important call to coders to remember the ethical choices embedded in the work they do. Recalling an episode in his own career when he built a site for a pharmaceutical company that drove people to use a dangerous drug, he writes, “As developers, we are often one of the last lines of defense against potentially dangerous and unethical practices.”

Life in Facebookistan: If you read only one piece about Facebook’s role in hastening the spread of so-called “fake news” in 2016, make it this one from BuzzFeed’s Alex Kantrowitz. He correctly situates the phenomenon in the context of Facebook wanting to own the real-time public conversation about current events, and in choices its designers made starting in late 2012 to roll out the Share button and Trending module. Kantrowitz doesn’t prove that these changes tilted the election (it would be very hard to prove that), but he does show that Mark Zuckerberg and crew wanted to make Facebook into your “perfect personalized newspaper” and failed to remember that newspapers only work with editors.

Facebook should hire human editors, Mathbabe Cathy O’Neil argues on the New York Times’ Room for Debate section, cheekily adding that the company has the money and there are plenty of out-of-work journalists available.

Conservative newsite owners are worried that Zuckerberg’s new guidelines for handling news on Facebook are going to hurt their traffic, Craig Silverman reports for BuzzFeed.

Brave new world: Police in Albuquerque have been accused of deleting problematic content from body-cameras, Sarah Burris reports for Raw Story.

Liz Barry’s pathbreaking story in Civicist on the vTaiwan democracy process has been translated into Spanish and posted on DemoComunes.net. Basta!