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PBC News & Comment: Trump Brings New Meaning to “Bully Pulpit”

Trump’s angry tweets reveal a thin-skinned bully whose followers—from GOP elected to fans—form enforcement army of bullies…–Politico reports on backlash aimed at GOP conservatives who even hint they have differences with Trump

–Trump supporter tweets video to Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald that causes epileptic seizure, payback for exposing Trump’s business conflicts overseas

–Trump’s ignorance on many laws—either natural or willful—raises alarms with law professors, reports Bob Egelko in SF Chronicle

–Trump’s pledge to move US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would upend 70-year policy

–Israel’s UN ambassador, a flame thrower named Danny Danon, plays victim cards in op-ed about a “reset” at the UN

–using the Clinton Foundation model, Trump kids announce, then retract, plan to trade donations to nonprofit for access to Trump, hunting with the boys

–Trump moves to settle labor contracts, possibly avoiding NLRB conflicts

–Obama invokes 1953 law to ban oil and gas drilling in parts of Atlantic, Arctic

–in our last in-depth interview for the year, former Chicago Sun-Times photo editor Richard Cahan talks about his book, Un-American, which graphically recounts the barbaric incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans during WWII

–Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof recaps Obama’s legacy, the new installment covers indefinite military detention and “capture or kill” policies that mostly lead to kills

–Trump’s premature twitter ejaculation on attacks in Turkey, Germany and Switzerland prompts Turkey’s Erdogan to blame Gulen, with scant evidence

–suspect in Berlin truck attack is Tunisian with drug history and alleged ties to Salafist preacher

–Uber is testing robot cars in San Francisco in violation of law, and there are some problems

–in Utne Reader, Tracy Rosenberg exposes the 78 “fusion centers’ that violate privacy and rarely identify real suspects

–Obama must pardon Leonard Peltier