Month: May 2018

Dear Deplorables 

by tristero

Dear Deplorables,

I get it. You won’t reject a politician because he’s a racist. Nor will you reject a politician because he likes to talk trash about women being worthless except to grab between the legs. Nor will you reject a politician if he openly mocks the disabled or if he treats the most powerful office in the world as an opportunity for grand-scale grifting.

But as I said, I understand. Valuing diversity, being respectful and honest in business and in my personal life? Those are my moral values. They’re not yours. Fair enough. There’s no reason we have to share the same moral values and we simply don’t. Instead…

You, my dear Deplorables, cherish family values. And by family values, you’ve been very clear. You mean, for example, not condoning the character of a man who sleeps with another woman just after his wife has given birth. Sounds reasonable, but…

There’s just one problem: you don’t live up to your own values. Because if you did, then this admission that your president had an affair with a director and actress in pornographic films would be a deal breaker. But I’m absolutely certain that next week I’ll look at my favorite poll, Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans, and it will still hover between 80% and 90% (right now it’s 89%).

But what about abortion? Every commentator says that that’s your bottom line, that that’s what got so many of you to accept Trump. He can do what he wants as long as he makes it impossible for women to have a legal abortion, for whatever reason, even rape.

Oh, yeah? I’ll bet good money that even if an abortion clinic produced a medical Permission-to-Abort form from one of Trump’s sexual companions, even if that form was signed by Trump himself and even if that form was notarized… yeah, even then you’d still slobber your approval and pump your fists and wear your MAGA caps.

Now, do you get it? It’s not by my moral standards that you’re so thoroughly deplorable, my friends, but by your own. Liberals like me aren’t judging you morally bankrupt, you’re judging yourselves.


A long time ago, a rather extraordinary young man ran up against his own Deplorables. He said:

 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Good question.

Love,

tristero

Too many Catholic chaplains?

by digby

Fergawdsakes:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) reversed course Thursday and agreed to keep the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy on as House chaplain after an extraordinary showdown that included the priest alleging anti-Catholic bias by Ryan’s chief of staff.

Conroy, who was forced to step down by Ryan last month, sent the speaker a letter rescinding his resignation and vowing to remain until the end of the year. Within hours Ryan had backed down, ending the possibility of what the speaker feared would be a “protracted fight” over what is supposed to be a unifying and spiritual position in the partisan chamber.

Ryan defended his original decision and continued to question whether Conroy was delivering sufficient “pastoral services” to the entire House. “I intend to sit down with Father Conroy early next week so that we can move forward for the good of the whole House,” he said.

The decision capped a highly unusual dispute between the Catholic speaker, who announced last month that he would retire, and a Jesuit priest who has spent seven years serving as the spiritual adviser to 435 lawmakers and thousands of congressional staffers.

Just a week ago, Conroy’s ouster had threatened to spark a political and theological firestorm. Most lawmakers thought Conroy’s original resignation, announced in mid-April, was voluntary, but Ryan faced a bipartisan backlash, particularly among the more than 140 Catholics in the House, when word spread that he had forced the priest into retirement.

Congress is away on a one-week break, and some GOP advisers hoped the issue would die down amid the flurry of other news. But then Conroy issued a two-page letter early Thursday accusing Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks, of anti-Catholic bias.

This was what Conroy claimed was said:

Conroy alleged Thursday that when Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks, informed him that Ryan was asking for his resignation, he “mentioned dismissively something like ‘maybe it’s time that we have a Chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.’”

Conroy, a Jesuit, is the second Catholic to ever serve as House chaplain.

“He mentioned my November prayer and an interview with the National Journal Daily,” Conroy added, referring to Burks.

The prayer was about how government policies should benefit everyone.

Sounded better in the original Italian

by digby

With all the news today about Rudy Giuliani I went back to look at this and was … just as astonished as I was when I first saw it. He’s as unhinged and filled with hate and bile as Trump.

And the cheers. My God the cheers …

Rudy’s natural authoritarianism is Trumpism personified.

Jonathan Chait had a good piece today discussing right wing authoritarianism and how it’s being played out with Trump and Giuliani’s shrill denunciations of the justice system even as they call for their political opponents to be jailed on a daily basis. It seems, on the surface, that there’s some sort of disconnect there but when you dig beneath the surface there isn’t. They believe the laws should not apply to them and that they have political power and therefore should be allowed to use the power of the state to punish their enemies.It should be obvious to anyone who watched some of those ridiculous Benghazi hearings or went through the Starr investigation or watched that disgusting Nuremberg rally of a political convention that these people do not care about civil liberties for anyone but themselves.

An excerpt of Chait’s piece:

Earlier this week, Vice-President Mike Pence went out of his way to honor former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. The case of Arpaio epitomizes the cutting-edge Republican philosophy about the rule of law. Arpaio has devoted his career to running roughshod over the law, including defying court orders, in order to intimidate immigrant communities who may or may not have run afoul of immigration law. The veneration of Arpaio, including Trump’s pardon of him, expresses their simultaneous belief in the law as something to applied with unrestrained brutality in their own hands, but that can be ignored altogether when they run afoul of it.

The duality of thought is the key to understanding it. Just as Giuliani can call the famously straight-laced Comey “perverted” in the very same interview he casually conceded that his own client habitually pays hush money to porn stars, Republicans can both fear the law as an instrument of terror while coveting it for the same purpose. This duality is how they can toggle between demanding ruthless authoritarian power and then, when describing their own legal predicament, squealing like the most unhinged anti-government radicals, comparing the FBI to Nazis. Trump holds this view with long-standing fervor, and has always combined a, shall we say, casual approach to legal scruples with demands for merciless law enforcement against the other (from Hillary Clinton to the Central Park Five) without any cognitive dissonance.

This is why, as wobbly and hypocritical as Democrats and liberals often are regarding civil liberties, they are a different problem than the threat posed by Republicans most of whom have an authoritarian belief system when it comes to what they call “law and order.” We’re watching them shed all pretenses with a corrupt criminal in the White House who is so undisciplined (and so compromised) that they are forced to bring this right out in the open.

This is the fascist tendency and if you can’t see it you are either complicit, are a useful idiot or have your head in the sand. It’s right out there.

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Sacrificial goats

by digby

I guess we’re going to see just how much the Trump cultists are prepared to sacrifice for their Dear Leader:

UPDATE: China just stopped buying U.S. soybeans (https://t.co/uuUsQEou8F). That's going to hurt the 30 pro-Trump districts in the map below –> https://t.co/oYynUzwGVn— Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) May 2, 2018

The world’s biggest oilseed processor just confirmed one of the soybean market’s biggest fears: China has essentially stopped buying U.S. supplies amid the brewing trade war.

“Whatever they’re buying is non-U.S.,” Bunge Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Soren Schroder said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “They’re buying beans in Canada, in Brazil, mostly Brazil, but very deliberately not buying anything from the U.S.”

In a move that caught many in U.S. agriculture by surprise, China last month announced planned tariffs on American shipments of soybeans. As the market waited for the measure to take effect, there was some hope among traders and shippers alike that relations between the nations could ease in the meantime and the trade flow would continue. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least for now, according to Bunge.

It’s “very clear” that the trade tensions have already stopped China from buying U.S. supplies, Schroder said. “How long that will last, who knows? But so long as there is this big cloud of uncertainty, that’s likely to continue.”

Recall what Trump said about the farmers when it was pointed out to him, apparently for the first time, that his “trade” threats affected exports as well as imports:

“But if we do a deal with China, if, during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice. But I tell you, our farmers are great patriots,” Trump said.

“These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country,” Trump said. “And we’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”

How do you like him now, farmers?

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Bizarroworld dispatch

by digby

You might want to grab something mind altering:

A group of 18 Republican lawmakers have signed their names to a letter formally nominating President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize — the latest development in a growing push to award the president the honor for his work toward peace in the Korean Peninsula.

The letter, sent by Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind. to the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Tuesday, and signed by 17 other members, says Trump has worked “tirelessly to apply maximum pressure to North Korea to end its illicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region.”

“His Administration successfully united the international community, including China, to impose one of the most successful international sanctions regimes in history,” the letter says. “The sanctions have decimated the North Korean economy and have been largely credited for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table.”

The letter is signed by 17 other members, including Reps Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Diane Black, R-Tenn., and Steve King, R-Iowa.

“Although North Korea has evaded demands from the international community to cease its aggression for decades, President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean peninsula,” the letter says. “We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.”

Tireless work to bring peace to our world.

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Jared is disposable, Ivanka is a red line

by digby

This has been overlooked in all the hoopla about Giuliani’s Stormy Daniels revelations but it may be just as important. Salon’s Matthew Rozsa breaks it down:

“Ivanka Trump? I think I would get on my charger and go right into – run into their offices with a lance if they go after her,” Giuliani told Fox News host Sean Hannity when asked about the possibility that the Mueller team would investigate or even prosecute the president’s eldest daughter.
[…]
In his responses to Hannity’s questions, Guiliani seemed to confirm that Trump would indeed try to turn his supporters against Mueller if he called in his daughter.

“If they do Ivanka, which I doubt they will, the whole country will turn on him. They are going after his daughter?” Giuliani asked Hannity.

What would Trump say differently about Mueller than he’s already saying?

Rudy Giuliani is SERIOUSLY overestimating the public support of Ivanka Trump here. pic.twitter.com/PwRTj6UV4j— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) May 3, 2018

As of March, Ivanka Trump’s unfavorable rating has increased by 10 percentage points, from 33 percent in January 2017 to 43 percent at that time, according to an Economist/YouGov poll. Her favorability rating remained static at 42 percent during that same period.

Similarly, while Jared Kushner’s favorability rating dropped from 25 percent in January 2017 to 22 percent in March 2018, his unfavorability rating soared from 29 percent in January 2017 to 42 percent in March 2018.

Trump brought his baby girl into the White House and gave her a title of Senior White House adviser. He sends her all over the world to represent the country. She’s been involved in a number of controversial events having to do with the Russia probe.

If Trump didn’t want her implicated in his dirty business he should have left her in New York. She is a grown woman and is responsible for hr own actions. The idea that she’s off limits is outrageous.

Meanwhile the ancient weirdo Giuliani screws the pooch again:

While Giuliani might be overestimating the public’s affinity for the president’s daughter, when Hannity asked about Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, Giuliani defended Kushner’s character before making the seemingly chivalrous (but actually chauvinistic) argument that men are more “disposable” than women.

“Jared is a fine man, you know that,” Giuliani told Hannity. “But men are, you know, disposable. A fine woman like Ivanka, come on!”

I guess we know now that Trump doesn’t feel any more loyalty for his son-in-law than he does for his former fixer Michael Cohen. Presumably he figures that the father of his grandchildren won’t turn on him if he throws him to the wolves.

I wonder …

There’s more about Ivanka’s involvement in a number of shady deals

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Talking to the big fish

by digby

This CNN interview strikes me as very odd:

After being interviewed by special counsel investigators on Wednesday, former aide to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign Michael Caputo told CNN that Robert Mueller’s team is “focused on Russia collusion.”

“It’s clear they are still really focused on Russia collusion,” Caputo said, adding, “They know more about the Trump campaign than anyone who ever worked there.”

Caputo, who advised the Trump campaign on communications in 2016, has long insisted he has no information about collusion between Trump’s team and Russia. He spoke with Senate intelligence investigators on Tuesday for their Russia probe and outlined the differences between Congress’ inquiries and the special counsel’s.

“The Senate and the House are net fishing,” Caputo said. “The special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate.”

Caputo lived and worked in Russia in the 1990s and later did business with Russian companies, including Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant. As a Republican consultant, Caputo worked with Trump adviser Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman. He denies any wrongdoing regarding Russia. Caputo is a longtime ally of Stone’s, a close associate of Trump who has come under scrutiny in the Russian investigation because of Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

I don’t know why Caputo felt the need to go on TV and say this. Maybe he’s just another Sam Nunberg who has some issues and can’t keep his mouth shut. He is obviously an eccentric ellow like so many in Trump’s orbit.

But he seemed to be intent upon sending a particular message on TV to “someone” who only gets his information from TV.

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Is Pence massaging the base just in case?

by digby

I wrote about the VP’s recent specific overtures to the deplorables for Salon today:

Are you wondering why Vice President Mike Pence seems to be spending a lot of time cultivating the Trump base? Maybe it’s because Donald Trump increasingly looks like he might not make it through a full term, and Pence needs to reassure Trump’s loyal base — now the core of the Republican electorate — that he’ll carry on the legacy of their Dear Leader. We’re still a long way from a resignation, a 25th Amendment removal or impeachment proceedings, but the craziness quotient is getting higher by the day.

First let’s recap what’s happened just this week in Donald Trump news. We learned that Robert Mueller’s office is ratcheting up the pressure to have the president submit to an interview and that the president and his team are resisting. We also know that he is tweeting away like a madman, as usual, robotically exclaiming “no collusion,” which he seems to think is some sort of protective spell against this investigation. Apparently no one has had the heart or the brass to inform him that his problem isn’t “collusion,” which has no clear legal definition term, but rather “conspiracy,” which does. Specifically, he is suspected of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government under 18 U.S.C. § 371, which simply states that it is a crime to conspire to “obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit.” One lawful function would, of course, be our elections.

Despite all the media’s obsession with obstruction of justice, the big story this week about the “49 questions” makes it clear that the collusion and/or conspiracy question is alive and well. Indeed, former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo told CNN on Wednesday after being interviewed that “it’s clear [prosecutors] are still really focused on Russia collusion. They know more about the Trump campaign than anyone who ever worked there. The Senate and the House are net fishing. The special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate.”

It was also announced on Tuesday that genial White House lawyer Ty Cobb was going to retire at the end of the month and would be replaced by Emmet Flood, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s impeachment team. This was widely assumed to be a sign that the president will begin a major legal fight against the special counsel’s investigation. Flood’s specialty appears to be claiming executive privilege, and whether that could be an effective legal strategy after the Trump administration has already turned over troves of documents and allowed everyone in the White House to be interviewed remains to be seen. But the fact that an attorney with “impeachment experience” is now on the team certainly suggests that the Russia scandal has entered a more serious phase.

It’s not just the Russia probe that has Trump on the ropes. His other new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Wednesday night and blew the lid off the Stormy Daniels lawsuit by admitting that Trump had paid back Michael Cohen the $130,000 in hush money that Cohen had paid Daniels before the election. That contradicts the president’s previous statements that he knew nothing about it. Reaction was swift:

4 possible felonies from Rudy Giuliani admission:
1. $130k payment to Stormy was in-kind coordinated contribution above limits
2. Cohen was a straw donor used to cover up true source of contribution
3. False statements on financial disclosures
4. False statements on banking forms https://t.co/KysAF3X4te

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 3, 2018

Giuliani also said that Trump fired former FBI director James Comey because Comey had refused to say publicly that the president wasn’t under investigation. That’s not going to be helpful to his client’s cause either, since it’s a brand new excuse that nobody’s heard before. In other words, Giuliani is acting just as unhinged as his client and has put Trump in even worse legal jeopardy at the worst possible moment.

Speaking of unhinged, what can we possibly say about the story of Trump’s doctor of more than 30 years, who claimed this week that Trump dispatched thugs to ransack and seize his medical records last year and dictated the doctor’s famous letter stating that Trump was in “astonishingly excellent” health. It was also reported that they seized the medical records filed under pseudonyms Trump used, raising the question of why in the world anyone would need to use a fake name with his own doctor. Coming as this does on the heels of the scandal around White House Physician Ronny Jackson, another doctor who had issued an “astonishingly excellent” bill of health for the president, you really have to wonder what the real state of Trump’s health might be:

“Dr. Bornstein’s letter was not the only questionable evaluation of Trump’s health. A few months ago, Dr. Ronny Jackson painted quite a rosy picture of the President’s health. We compared the two “reports” and there were some striking similarities…” – @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/PYXOm8ubl6

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) May 2, 2018

All of this brings us back to Mike Pence, who seems to be all over the place right now, spending a lot of energy kissing up to the Trump base. It’s not that he’s ignored them in the past. Indeed, he’s made a fetish out of taking “principled” stands designed to vouch for the president’s upright character with Republicans who might be uncomfortable with Trump’s pathological lying and libertine morality.

Recall this ostentatious display of patriotic fervor:

I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) October 8, 2017

Pence also made great shows of refusing to stand for the unified Korean team at the Olympics and walking out of the Summit of the Americas when the Cuban representative was introduced. These are the actions one expects from a doctrinaire right-wing moralist hawk, which has undoubtedly kept some of the faithful GOP on the administration’s side. If Trump is good enough for Pence, he must be OK, right?

But this week the veep has gone even further. As the presidency looks ever shakier and Trump’s legal situation appears to reach critical mass, Pence has gone to great lengths to assure the racist element of the base that he’s one of them. In Arizona he appeared at an “America First” event led by a former Trump staffer who resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he was a stone cold racist who had said, “I believe wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, that the black race as a whole, not totally, is lazier than the white race, period.”

At that same event, Pence called out to former Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was recently the recipient of a presidential pardon, calling Arpaio a “tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law.” (The longtime sheriff was convicted of criminal contempt for willfully violating a federal court order.)

The crowd roared its approval, needless to say. They were almost as excited as if it were the Great Man himself.

It’s impossible to know exactly what Pence is up to, but it’s conceivable that he is reassuring the base that he’s one of them, in case this impeachment lawyer turns out to be a necessity. All this talk about Trump concealing his health records and forcing doctors to cover for him might also make old D.C. hands start whispering about the 25th Amendment. If either of those two things becomes more realistic, Pence’s potential legitimacy as president — and his viability in 2020 — could depend on keeping the Trumpers happy.

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No conspiracy. No conspiracy.
Tom Sullivan

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared last night on Fox News with Sean Hannity to defend the president, now his client. He did the kind of job we have come to expect from those in the employ of Donald J. Trump. Giuliani admitted what the president has heretofore forcefully denied. Trump knew about and in a series of payments repaid lawyer Michael Cohen for the $130,000 in hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. There was no campaign finance violation, Giuliani insisted to a befuddled Hannity.

🚨 Giuliani says Trump repaid Cohen the $130,000 used as hush money for Stormy Daniels pic.twitter.com/pqNtZthgwf— Jon Passantino (@passantino) May 3, 2018

The New York Times:

“Some time after the campaign is over, they set up a reimbursement, $35,000 a month, out of his personal family account,” Mr. Giuliani said. He added that over all, Mr. Cohen was paid $460,000 or $470,000 from Mr. Trump through those payments, which also included money for “incidental expenses” that he had incurred on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

Those are some incidentals.

Cohen had previously claimed the money came out of his own pocket, financed by a home loan, the Times adds, leaving him open to a charge of violating campaign finance caps. Giuliani’s statements, if true, take the heat off Cohen and put the focus on Trump. If made in furtherance of his campaign, Trump would have to declare the payments to the Federal Elections Commission as a campaign expenditure. Trump did not.

Paul S. Ryan, an official at the government watchdog group Common Cause, argued that “all the facts indicate that the payment was to influence the election.”

Mr. Ryan asserted that Mr. Giuliani’s admission could allow prosecutors to make the case that Mr. Trump “knowingly caused his campaign committee to file an incomplete disclosure report with the F.E.C.”

Twitter exploded.

That time when admitting to your wife and the world that you did pay the porn star $130K in hush money was better than admitting $130k was an illegal campaign contribution. https://t.co/KZufSzqBzW— Nick Hanauer (@NickHanauer) May 3, 2018

It’s going to come out that Trump personally drove Ted Cruz’s dad’s getaway car from the JFK assassination and people will be tweeting about how his base doesn’t care so it doesn’t matter.— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 3, 2018

Election Law Blog’s Rick Hasen elaborates on the campaign finance implications for Slate:

Although many campaign finance violations are handled just as fines, as Giuliani seemed to suggest in his Hannity interview Wednesday night, that’s not true for willful violations of campaign finance law, especially those implicating the public interest. Those can lead to criminal liability. If there was an unreported six-figure loan to the campaign to pay off someone who had an affair with a presidential candidate, with repayments facilitated through corporate resources, that seems like a serious enough violation to merit review by the Justice Department.

Ultimately, Giuliani offered two defenses for Trump on Hannity. One, as mentioned, is that the payments were not campaign-related.

The other is that Trump did not know the specifics of what Cohen was doing; just that Cohen was the fixer taking care of things just like Giuliani said he did for his clients. It is a defense that could well be corroborated or rejected based on what’s in the seized Cohen materials.

About those Cohen materials. As Giuliani was implicating his client on Fox, on MSNBC the New York Times’s Michael Schmidt explained to Rachel Maddow just how difficult a client Trump’s legal team has to defend. Asked whether Giuliani and the other new team members would be addressing the Cohen case in the Southern District of New York as well as the Mueller investigation, Schmidt replied [timestamp 3:12]:

“The thing about the New York case is that they don’t know a lot about it. They are very unnerved about it because Michael Cohen and the president will not talk about it. They won’t disclose what they think is in those documents.”

Trump and his cronies are in charge of the Executive Branch of a superpower with nuclear weapons.

There is a scene in Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honor” that keeps coming to mind. It’s the 1994 novel in which Clancy foresees a suicide attack on the United States using an airliner. Jack Ryan has this exchange with his Secret Service bodyguard:

“You mean to tell me that it’s that screwed up?”
 “Paul, you think you’re smart?” Jack asked. The question took the Secret Service man aback a little.
 “Yeah, I do. So?”
 “So why do you suppose that anybody else is smarter than you are? They’re not, Paul,” Ryan went on. “They have a different job, but it isn’t about brains. It’s about education and experience. Those people don’t know crap about running a criminal investigation. Neither do I. Every tough job requires brains, Paul. But you can’t know them all. Anyway; bottom line, okay? No, they’re not any smarter than you, and maybe not as smart as you. It’s just that it’s their job to run the financial markets, and your job to do
something else.”

“Jesus,” breathes the bodyguard.

* * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

There is such a thing as “fake news.” The GOP calls it “creative license.”

by digby

From the party that shrieks “fake news!” 24/7, we have this:

A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia is running an ad showing his primary opponent shaking hands with Hillary Clinton — something that never happened. The ad uses a manipulated version of a photograph that originally showed his rival shaking the hand of someone else: President Trump.

Evan Jenkins, a congressman from West Virginia, is running in a six-candidate primary for the Republican nomination, with the winner set to take on Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin in the fall. The GOP primary is next Tuesday.

A recent ad from Jenkins’s campaign showed one of his Republican opponents, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, genially greeting Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president. The image is a fake. But we only know that for sure because Jenkins spokesman Andy Sere told FactCheck.org that the Jenkins campaign had taken “creative license” with the ad.

“We sometimes take creative license while arranging images in order to help make a substantive point,” Sere said.

The twisted deviousness of substituting a picture of Trump with a picture of Clinton to take down a Republican rival is almost too good to be true. But it is:

Jenkins’s ad is a step toward what the Atlantic magazine recently said could be “the collapse of reality,” as techniques for altering images become more realistic and harder to detect and spread from still photographs to video.

“When you and I look at the same object, how do you really know that we see the same thing?” wrote The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer. “Still, institutions (media, government, academia) have helped people coalesce around a consensus—rooted in a faith in reason and empiricism—about how to describe the world, albeit a fragile consensus that has been unraveling in recent years.”

Foer’s article explained how increasingly sophisticated technology will give bad actors the ability to create realistic-looking video that portrays people doing all sorts of things that they didn’t actually do.

This, Foer wrote, “will create new and understandable suspicions about everything we watch.”

It risks a further breakdown — beyond what we are already seeing in American public life — of a consensus on basic sets of facts about reality and truth. This kind of chaos opens doors to politicians who want to dismiss all criticism that comes their way as fake, much as the current president often does.

Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant and ad-maker, confirmed that the Jenkins ad has pushed the envelope beyond where candidates have been willing to go.

“It’s pretty out there,” Trippi told Yahoo News.

In the past, Trippi said, ads have morphed the face of one politician into another, in part because ad-makers simply thought the technology was cool.

“It was clear what you were saying and doing: ‘He’s just another Ollie North Republican,’” Trippi said. “Now, though, we’re getting to this place where it’s not clear at all, and where with sleight of hand you can make events that didn’t happen actually appear as fact. And that’s a totally different thing.”

Meanwhile:

Congressional Democrats are pledging not to exploit stolen materials in their campaigns, but Republicans have declined to match that commitment, leaving the midterm races vulnerable to malicious interference.

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