Month: September 2019

He starts off by going back to the beginning of this “dynasty” to Trump’s grandfather, who made his money as a German immigrant catering to the miners in the Klondike during the gold rush. (Who knew?) Then there was Fred, Trump’s daddy, who wa all know was a real piece of work. And then Donald. His kids, like virtually all 3rd generation heirs to fortunes, are pretty much duds, as we can see. But they’ve each taken very different approaches to the succession.

Interestingly, Eric turns out to be the businessman. He’s the one running the Trump Organization (which means people should pay closer attention to what he’s doing.) Don Jr and Ivanka are fighting it out over who is going to be the heir to Trump’s cult.  And guess what? Trump might favor Ivanka, but the folks love Don Jr.

Here’s a taste:

Watching trump’s children appear on Fox News, one gets the sense that they’re still auditioning for their father’s affection. Ivanka speaks in dulcet tones about how proud, so proud, she is of her dad. Don bashes the “fake-news media” with performative force. Eric, the least camera-ready of the three, clings to talking points, lavishing praise on Trump whenever he gets stuck. (In an interview earlier this year, Eric repeated variations of “He’s the greatest guy in the world” in such reverential tones that even Sean Hannity seemed uncomfortable with the obsequiousness.) 

Trump watches these segments from the West Wing and offers a running commentary to whoever is around, according to a former aide. His attitude toward each of his adult children on any given day is shaped by how they are playing on cable news. Ivanka tends to draw rave reviews, while Don’s are more mixed, with the president muttering things like “Why did he say that?” and “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Recently, though, his perspective on his two oldest children seems to have shifted. 

In June, Ivanka accompanied her father to Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit. After the meetings, the French government posted a video clip that showed the president’s daughter standing amid a gaggle of side-eyeing world leaders as she tried awkwardly to force her way into the conversation. The clip went viral, spawning a hashtag—#UnwantedIvanka—and a wave of parody Photoshops inserting her into great moments in history: mugging for the camera at the March on Washington, grinning next to Winston Churchill at Yalta. News outlets around the world covered the snub. Pundits called it a damning indictment of Trump’s nepotism, while foreign-policy experts argued that Ivanka’s lack of credibility could harm U.S. diplomacy. A quote from an anonymous Indian diplomat recirculated in the media: “We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit Saudi princes.” 

The episode laid bare the depth of Ivanka’s miscalculation. She had thought when her father took office that the surest path to power and status was to plant herself in the West Wing and mingle with the global elite. But after two and a half years of trying to burnish her credentials as a geopolitical player, Ivanka had become an international punch line. There was, it turned out, no market for a genteel brand of Trumpism. 

Don, meanwhile, threw himself into his father’s reelection campaign, while quietly plotting his own future. According to Republicans familiar with the discussions, he considered running for office somewhere in the Mountain West, where his love of guns and hunting could help woo voters. A privately commissioned poll in Montana—passed around enthusiastically among Don’s inner circle—showed that 75 percent of the state’s Republicans viewed him favorably. In April, it was announced that Guilfoyle would join the Trump campaign as a senior adviser. 

While Don mulled his options, some allies talked him up as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee. Others suggested he launch a right-wing political outfit that would allow him to hold rallies and bestow endorsements. The word kingmaker started getting tossed around.

Read the whole article. It delves deeply into Trump’s dysfunctional relationship with the kids and their own twisted ambition. To be honest, Don Jr comes off as the most sympathetic, even though he’s a grotesque right wing pig. His is a story of someone who finally found his niche in life after being forced to live in Princess Ivanka’s shadow.

She is, apparently, an icy robot who has spent her life currying her creepy father’s affection. Of course, who really knows what that’s about …

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You’re fired! No, I quit!

by digby

Trump never liked that moustache

I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2019

I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) September 10, 2019

I will certainly not grieve the loss of Jphn Bolton. In fact he may actually do some good if he decides to go rogue and peels a few Republicans away from Trump. But he’s a malevolent influence no matter who he works for so it’s a good thing he’s out of the corridors of power.

It’s interesting that Lindsey graham gave such a sniveling response, saying “the president needs to have someone he has faith in.” I think in Trump’s case he just wants a bootlicking sycophant who will tell him his impulsive lunacy is brilliant no matter what it is. I’m sure he’ll find someone.

The New York Times:

“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service.”

Mr. Bolton offered a different version of how the end came in his own message on Twitter shortly afterward. “I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow,’” Mr. Bolton wrote, without elaborating.

Responding to a question from The New York Times via text message, Mr. Bolton said it was his initiative. “Offered last night without his asking,” he wrote. “Slept on it and gave it to him this morning.”

He’s not happy.

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Fantasy and Envy

by digby

WATCH: @chrislhayes on the perverseness of the politics behind Trump and the Taliban: “I think the only person who could sell a deal to 40% of the country is Donald Trump. If the shoe were on the other foot…the right would lose its mind.” #inners pic.twitter.com/EQzajxStad— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 10, 2019

I thought this exchange was pretty good as well. Frum nails exactly what was going through his head:

David Frum: The meeting was never going to happen. This is a story about fantasy and envy. The president’s fantasy about being a great deal maker and his envy of President Obama’s peace prize. Zalmay Khalilzad, our former ambassador to afghanistan was running a process of negotiation with the Taliban to see if an agreement could be reached. About the first of September, he seems to have reached some kind of interim deal. What should have happened at that point, it goes into the government and different agencies look at it and say, do we like it, can we look at it, so we go forward do we stop. Trump got the smell of this and thought “this is done deal, Zalmay is going to get the credit, he’s going to get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Matthews: How do you know his motive?

Frum: I don’t know his motive but I do know the timeline. This is a moment where it goes to an agency process not up to the president of the United States. But Trump swoops in and he invites everyone to Camp David. And the Taliban, these terrorist murderers, say with mature wisdom, why don’t we have the meeting at the end of the process? But Trump said, “I want to make the deal. I don’t want to leave it to Khalilzad because then he’ll get the credit. I want to make the deal. Only, of course, he can’t make the deal.

Matthews: he wanted it to pop out there. so he could walk out with …

Frum: Exactly, He wanted to be Jimmy Carter without the work. And so when it becomes clear that the Taliban says “we’re coming after the deal, not before” and there are a lot of problems with this interim arrangement, at that point, as the fantasy of the Nobel begins to recede, he says “in that case, you can’t fire me, I fire you!” and he blows up the whole thing and he does it on twitter, probably damaging a process that needed to continue.

He says the talks are “dead” and that they’re killing Taliban as fast as they can. So, “damaged” may be a bit mild.

What a monumental cock-up.

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Stacey’s challenge
by Tom Sullivan

2018 GA governor’s race results via Politico.

Stacey Abrams cited her record-breaking 2018 campaign for Georgia governor Monday as evidence the state should be Democrats’ ground zero for organizing efforts in 2020. With two U.S. Senate seats on the line and a chance to put Georgia in play in the presidential contest, Abrams writes in a memo issued on Monday, “any less than full investment in Georgia would amount to strategic malpractice.”

The 16-page “Abrams Playbook” co-written with former campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo rejects the notion that Abrams — who has stated she will not seek a Senate seat in 2020 — is not the only Democrat who might win statewide in Georgia. Building on her strategy for massively expanding the electorate rather than targeting the small pool of “swing voters” or “persuadable voters,” any “aggressive, authentic candidate and campaign” might win in Georgia. And not only in Georgia, Abrams argues, but in any state “poised to take advantage of demographic changes.” Those changes include not only people of color but in-migrating whites.

“We do not lose winnable white voters because we engage communities of color” nor “lose urban votes because we campaign in rural areas,” states the memo sent to Democrats’ 2020 White House hopefuls and Democratic strategists,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

The playbook includes charts that outline where Democrats can make gains in 2020, particularly in metro Atlanta counties where hundreds of thousands of African-American voters skipped the midterm. In Fulton alone, it said, an estimated 134,000 registered black voters didn’t cast ballots in 2018.

Groh-Wargo wrote that the cost of competing in Georgia, where the Abrams campaign and the state party combined to spend $42 million in 2018, is cheaper than other battleground states. She singled out Ohio, where Hillary Clinton lost by 8 points despite a $70 million investment.

“By investing big and investing early in registration, organizing, and turnout, Democrats can further change Georgia’s electorate and maximize turnout among voters of color and Democratic-leaning white voters,” Groh-Wargo writes.

Democrats from the grassroots to the White House tend to view elections through the lens of statewide races – for president, for governor, for Senate. Those campaigns set the agenda and budgets for Get Out The Vote efforts statewide. Those candidates want to get out the vote in bulk. They pour their resources into counties where they can do that. In Georgia, that’s Atlanta and environs: Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb and Dekalb. Indeed, those counties top the playbook’s list of targets. Beyond there, Georgia gets rural fast. One-third of Georgians live in 134 counties under 100,000 in population.

.@teamabrams & @GeorgiaDemocrat's Coord. Campaign's awesome staff & vols w/amazing legislative candidates ran an unprecedented grassroots effort that has changed Georgia forever. Here's the rundown of wins (TBD CD7!) and this grassroots campaign by the numbers #gapol #teamabrams pic.twitter.com/gaCQXwIPPf— Lauren Groh-Wargo (@gwlauren) November 17, 2018

Although the memo touts the Abrams campaign’s investments across the state in 2018, those tend to bleed away fast. Large campaigns parachute out as fast as they parachute in, and so does the money. The Georgia Democratic Party’s web page shows 97 of 159 county committees across the state (60%) presently unorganized. (Checks for signs of Internet life among the missing support this.) When Abrams ran last year that unorganized number was under a quarter. Knowledgeable Georgia Democrats assured me this condition was simply a delay in data entry and to give it a month. That was in May.

And while the memo celebrates down-ballot wins assigned to Abrams’ organizing, these too tend to be clustered in Atlanta Metro. Running up the score in Georgia’s bluest areas (or Raleigh, Greensboro or Winston-Salem in North Carolina) may help the top of the ticket, but it doesn’t win extra seats in the state legislature. To win and hold a majority, Democrats don’t just need blue votes in bulk, they need them out where state House and Senate seats are drawn. (It is the same principle with the national popular vote and control of the U.S. Senate.)

Invest in enduring local committee infrastructure where there is none now and Democrats in Georgia and elsewhere might even pick up enough legislative seats to undo the 2021 Republican gerrymandering already in the planning stages. But while big organizing is still driven by the campaign cycle instead of for the long-term, Democrats at the grassroots will have to wait for demography to do the work for them over time.

On party (rather than campaign) infrastructure, Howard Dean is still right: If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win.

Update: One advantage of Abrams’ efforts I forgot to mention is that Democratic campaigns vying for the 2020 presidential nomination are already pouring resources into Georgia and building on them less than a year after her campaign ended.

A cruel, twisted piece of work

by digby

Man what a day. This was the cherry on top of a very surreal day. So far anyway:

Trump defends prohibiting some people from hurricane-ravaged Bahamas from entering the United States because he doesn't want "very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very very bad drug dealers" here. pic.twitter.com/BL7q93xtfD— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 9, 2019

Early Monday afternoon, acting Customs and Border Protection head Mark Morgan offered some peace of mind to Bahamians seeking humanitarian relief in the United States in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, following the news that some were turned away for not having visas.

“This is a humanitarian mission,” Morgan assured. “If your life is in jeopardy and you’re in the Bahamas … you’re going to be allowed to come to the United States, whether you have travel documents or not.” He said the processing would be handled expeditiously.

Then President Trump offered a very different message.

In a later Q&A with reporters, Trump emphasized that “very bad people” could exploit the process and warned against welcoming Bahamians.

“We have to be very careful,” Trump said. “Everybody needs totally proper documentation. Because, look, the Bahamas had some tremendous problems with people going to the Bahamas that weren’t supposed to be there.”

The president added, “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States — including some very bad people and very bad gang members.”

So, shortly after Morgan said people didn’t need to have documents, Trump said they did. And shortly after Morgan emphasized a quick process, Trump suggested it would need to be very thorough.

The president’s comments shouldn’t be a surprise. This is his default response, after all, to accepting people into the United States on humanitarian grounds. He did it during the 2016 campaign, arguing against welcoming refugees from Syria and even calling for a complete ban on Muslim immigration. When he came into office, he privately railed against a deal between the Obama administration and Australia on taking in other refugees.

What’s are the odds of Mark Morgan having to walk back his words?

Yeah …

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“I’m going to give out my financial condition”

by digby

“I own a lot of different places,” he told reporters. “Soon, you will find that out because I will be, at some point prior to the election, I will be giving out a financial report of me. And it will be extremely complete. I’m going to give out my financial condition.”

Aaaand:

“You will be extremely shocked at the numbers,” he told reporters. “Many, many times what you think. I don’t need to have somebody take a room overnight at a hotel.”

Right. This is a “billionaire” who was hawking this garbage even as he was running for president three years ago:

He’s still doing it:

New season, new camo 🍂 Shop the limited edition @TrumpStore collection just in time for Fall: https://t.co/x2bZ34e6hO pic.twitter.com/9b2b04VK3k

— The Trump Organization (@Trump) September 9, 2019

The man never leaves a dime on the sidewalk. And that’s because he always needs the money.

He won’t release his tax returns. And it’s obvious that whatever “financial report” he releases will 100% prime bullshit.

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The House will investigate Rudy’s dirty project

by digby

Rudy Giuliani traveling to Ukraine without an official portfolio while acting as the president’s lawyer and talking about Joe Biden is a scandal. That Trump would then take a dangerous action that looks for all the world like blackmail is impeachable:

The House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees launched an investigation Monday into alleged efforts by President Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure the government of Ukraine into aiding the president’s re-election campaign.

In August, the New York Times reported that Giuliani had met with a top associate of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to push the government to investigate potential conflicts of interest involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who once served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Giuliani also met with a former Ukrainian diplomat in May after publicly saying he wanted to ask Zelensky to investigate the origins of the Mueller investigation. The diplomat had claimed, without evidence, that the Democratic National Committee worked with Ukraine in 2016 to find incriminating information about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Giuliani claims he was acting as a private citizen and the State Department was aware of his efforts in Ukraine. He would not say if the president was involved, but the Ukrainian government says Trump asked about corruption investigations during a July phone call with Zelensky.

Details: The 3 committees — chaired by Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) — are demanding records related to Trump’s and Giuliani’s “attempts to manipulate the Ukrainian justice system to benefit the President’s re-election campaign and target a possible political opponent.”

What they’re saying:

“A growing public record indicates that, for nearly two years, the President and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appear to have acted outside legitimate law enforcement and diplomatic channels to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity.”

That’s very good. But then there’s this:

The Trump administration is slow-walking $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, annoying lawmakers and advocates who argue the funding is critical to keeping Russia at bay.

President Donald Trump asked his national security team to review the funding program, known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in order to ensure the money is being used in the best interest of the United States, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday.

This is almost certainly Trump and Rudy’s devious little plan. It’s good the House is looking into his activity. Maybe once they finish that they can look into his illegal activity in the 2016 election.

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Wilber Ross, Trump enforcer #2

by digby

You don’t contradict Dear Leader:

The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

Officials at the White House and the Commerce Department declined to comment on administration involvement in the NOAA statement.

The actions by the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr., are the latest developments in a political imbroglio that began more than a week ago, when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas and Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Alabama would be hit “harder than anticipated.” A few minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala., posted on Twitter that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”

Mr. Trump persisted in saying that Alabama was at risk and a few days later, on Sept. 4, he displayed a NOAA map that appeared to have been altered with a black Sharpie to include Alabama in the area potentially affected by Dorian.

Mr. Ross, the commerce secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. Unlike career government employees, political staff are appointed by the administration. They usually include a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides.

I don’t know how many scandals we can endure. I suspect it’s exhausting everyone at this point and I fear that the opposition will just give up. They don’t really seem to have the fire in the belly to fight this. I think at this point they just want to put their heads in the sand and hope they eke out a victory in 2020 so they can pretend none of this ever happened.

But it is happening. And it’s fundamentally changing our country every single day.

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by digby

I have written a bit about this before but I think Jonathan Chait lays out the case succinctly:

Donald Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days. 

The pattern played out in its most absurd form via Trump’s manic insistence on justifying his inaccurate warning that Alabama “likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from Hurricane Dorian, at a time when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forecasting the state faced no risk. At first, Trump attempted to justify his lie by brandishing a chart he crudely doctored. 

More ominously, on Friday, the NOAA issued an official statement backing up Trump’s original false claim. And the Washington Post reported the agency had instructed its staff not to contradict Trump’s claims. “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” an NOAA meteorologist told the Post. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring.” 

The controversy might appear absurd and contentless. But Trump views the stakes as high, not without reason. Among his supporters, Trump has created a cultlike devotion to his competence and honesty, both of which are threatened by acknowledging his falsehood about the hurricane. 

Also on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice is launching an antitrust investigation of automakers who had agreed with California to raise their emissions standards. Trump is driven by a desire to overturn an Obama-era rule increasing mileage standards out of an obsession with destroying his predecessor’s legacy and an automatic rejection of any policy to limit climate change. Trump took the agreement as a personal affront, raging publicly at the automakers for dealing with California and undercutting his leverage to loosen emissions standards. 

The antitrust investigation is a preposterous abuse. The automakers are not conspiring to fix prices. They are negotiating pollution regulations with a state that is legally entitled to set its own air-pollution rules. But the threat of retribution has already dissuaded automakers from dealing with California. “One person with direct knowledge of negotiations said that Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz had indicated an interest in joining, but later abstained due to fears of political fallout,” reports the Journal. The New York Times notes that other auto firms steered clear of dealing with California because they “fear retribution from an unpredictable administration.” 

It is not new for firms to tiptoe around a temperamental president. What’s novel is the Department of Justice being used as Trump’s legal muscle. The threat of a nasty tweet is now bolstered with the threat of massively expensive litigation. 

Also on Friday, the Washington Post editorial page reported an explosive new development in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. The president has sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure its government to supply evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden – even though there isn’t any sign Biden has done anything wrong. Here is another field where, by conscripting foreign countries to rough up domestic political rivals, Trump has broken new ground. 

But Trump is not relying solely on Giuliani’s efforts at persuasion. Trump has refused to allow Ukraine’s president a White House visit, and suspended $250 million in military aid, to pressure its government into complying. To be sure, weakening Ukraine’s military dovetails neatly with Trump’s pro-Russian stance. But the Post reports that Trump is using the aid, which enjoys bipartisan support, as an extortion device. 

Finally, the New York Times supplied more details on the ongoing scandal of Trump profiting from his office. During the presidential campaign, Trump waved away concerns about the unprecedented conflicts of interest that would arise from him running a business at the same time he wields enormous power. Republicans in Congress have evinced no concern whatsoever about Trump’s corruption, refusing to take even modest steps like compelling the release of his tax returns. 

Increasingly, Republicans are dispensing with the fig leaf and flaunting their complicity. Putting money in Trump’s pocket by booking his properties has become a symbol of partisan solidarity. It is a signal of support both to the president and to fellow Republicans or business clients that you are on the ins with the boss. “President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement. 

None of these stories by itself has the singular drama of a Teapot Dome or a Watergate. Indeed, the mere fact that there is so much corruption prevents any single episode from capturing the imagination of the media and the public. But it is the totality of dynamic that matters. A corrupt miasma has slowly enveloped Washington. For generations, both parties generally upheld an assumption that the government would abide rules and norms dividing its proper functioning from the president’s personal and political interests. 

The norm of bureaucratic professionalism and fairness is a pillar of the political legitimacy and economic strength of the American system, the thing that separates countries like the U.S. from countries like Russia. The decay of that culture is difficult to quantify, but the signs are everywhere. Trump’s stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government.

As I wrote earlier today, it’s happening in plain sight. And I have to admit this is making more nervous than I’ve been before. The systemic corruption is extremely dangerous particularly when one of our major parties is backing it to the hilt and the judiciary has been packed with sympathizers.

As much as we all know that the system has been corrupted before, maybe forever, this is different. It’s openly saying that if they have the power to steal for themselves and use government power to maintain their hold. That’s straight-up authoritarian oligarchy.

If Democrats win in 2020, things are not just going to spring back to normal. The weaknesses of the system have been totally exposed. They will have to embark of a massive reform effort to try to put this rickety democracy on firmer ground.  It starts with the House summoning the guts to do their constitutional duty. Will they?

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Trump and “free stuff”

by digby

This guy is almost certainly a Trump voter.

So Trump thinks “free stuff” is a political winner. No kidding.  But he is mostly concerned with giving “free stuff” to himself and his rich pals. If he can throw some bones to the rubes, that’s fine. And let’s face facts. The only people he wants to give “free stuff” to are his white voters. I think it’s pretty obvious how he feels about people of color.

As he campaigns for re-election, Donald Trump and his team have made trashing the “socialists or communists” in the 2020 Democratic presidential field a cornerstone of their messaging. In private, however, the president often strikes a different, more nuanced tone—one driven by a concern that socialism (at least as defined by the Democrats) may actually sell politically.

This year, Trump has repeatedly told friends and donors that running against “socialism” in a general election may not be “so easy” because of its populist draw, according to four Republicans and sources close to Trump who’ve heard him say this over the past several months.

According to a person who was in the room, Trump told donors at a recent private event that though “a lot of people think it’ll be easy to beat [in 2020],” the “truth is, it might not be so easy.” The president, according to the source, said that “you can have someone who loves Trump, but many people love free stuff, too.” He added that if candidates tell Americans, especially young voters—that they’re going to cancel their debt, “that’s a tough one” to run against.

“I have discussed the popularity of the democratic socialists’ message, i.e. Sanders and [Elizabeth] Warren, with President Trump on more than one occasion and in person,” said Eric Bolling, a BlazeTV host and friend of the Trump family. “Specifically the idea of excusing debt and giving away, [as Trump says], ‘free stuff’ becoming more and more popular among younger voters.”

Bolling said Trump had made these comments to him as recently as mid-2019. “I feel it was more an observation than a re-election concern [of the president’s],” he recalled. “I feel the discussion was more of a tamping-down of expectations than any serious concern about winning re-election in 2020. It’s politics. Just look to Joe Biden who recently suggested Iowa isn’t a must-win state.”

Trump’s private concessions don’t reflect the message he and his party organs have typically pushed in public. Over the last year, the president, his campaign, the Republican National Committee, and a host of other prominent GOP campaign groups have sought to paint much, if not all, of the Democratic field as “socialist.” It’s a playbook they’ve used many times before, including against President Barack Obama. But it is widely believed to have more resonance now, with more progressive candidates—including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the self-identifying democratic-socialist— running in the Democratic primary. The attack line is so central to the GOP playbook that Trump even used it in his 2019 State of the Union address.

“Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” Trump said. “America was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination, and control…Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

The article goes on to say that Trump is very impressed with Bernie Sanders’ crowds but notes that they aren’t as big as his are. Of course.

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