Month: June 2020

John Bolton said he will not vote for Trump but also won’t vote for Biden. He’ll do one of those chickenshit write-in votes instead of biting the bullet and actually trying to defeat Trump. It’s better than nothing but it’s lame.

These guys may be people I have opposed for years, but they aren’t insane and they know that Trump simply cannot be allowed another term. So they are doing the right thing:

Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials are forming a group that will back Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, people familiar with the effort said, in a further sign that President Donald Trump has alienated some members of his own party.

The group will publicly endorse Biden in the coming weeks and its members plan to campaign for the former vice president who is challenging Trump in the Nov. 3 election, the sources said. It includes at least two dozen officials who served under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, with dozens more in talks to join, the sources added.

They will argue that another four years of a Trump presidency would endanger U.S. national security and that Republican voters should view Biden as the better choice despite policy differences, the sources said.

The initiative is being led by John Bellinger III and Ken Wainstein, according to the people involved, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Both held senior posts under George W. Bush. Bellinger served as legal adviser to the National Security Council and State Department. Wainstein served as Bush’s homeland security adviser and as chief of staff to former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Another member of the group, the sources said, is Robert Blackwill, who served as a foreign policy adviser under both Bushes and ambassador to India under George W. Bush. The group includes some independents and officials from outside the national security arena, the sources said.

“Trump pals around with dictators. He’s a real danger,” a person involved in the group said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The group could go public before the Democratic National Convention in August when Biden will formally become his party’s nominee, but a launch date has not yet been set, the sources said. Opinion polls show Biden with a widening lead over Trump.

I’m sorry. I like Fauci as much as the next person but this is bullshit:

In a heated exchange, Rep. David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) asked Fauci about the Trump administration’s belated guidance to Americans to wear face coverings to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In late March, McKinley noted, the administration was advising the public that there was still no consensus on whether masks were effective.

“Do you now regret not advising people more forcefully to wear masks earlier?” McKinley asked.

Fauci did not appear to be pleased with the question.

“Okay, we’re going to play that game,” he said. “Let me explain to you what happened back then.”

After McKinley told him that only a simple “yes” or “no” was required, Fauci shot back, “No, there’s more than a yes or no, by the tone of your question. I don’t regret that, because let me explain to you what happened.”

He continued: “At that time, there was a paucity of equipment that our health-care providers needed. … We did not want to divert masks and PPE away from them to be used by the people. Now that we have enough, we recommend” wearing masks.

They weren’t straight with the American people. They could have told the truth and said that they needed the good masks for health care workers and the president could have evoked the Defense Protection Act in the very beginning to procure them. ( In any case, I can testify to the fact that they were almost impossible to get online even right at the beginning because I tried.) And at the same time they could have told everyone to cover their mouths and faces with cloth coverings,

Instead they lied and said masks would actually cause us to catch the virus because we’d all be touching our faces constantly and give it to ourselves. It caused a lot of confusion and there was enough legitimate confusion to go around at that time.

This was a mistake.

Remember when John Hinderacker of Powerline said this about George W. Bush?

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Here’s Powerline’s Scott Johnson proving fealty to the new Dear Leader, yet another stable genius who just gets no respect:

There are few men in public life I have admired more than John Bolton. To take just one example, I am grateful for his successful work in the administration of the first President Bush to overturn the UN’s vile “Zionism is a form of racism” resolution. See pages 40-43 of his memoir, Surrender Is Not an Option.

Bolton suffered the Democrats’ remorseless campaign of defamation against him to prevent his confirmation as our ambassador to the United Nations upon his appointment by the second President Bush. I wrote about the role of the New York Times in this campaign at the time in “Déjà vu, all over again.”

I thought Bolton provided stalwart representation of the United States at the United Nations following his recess appointment as our UN ambassador by the second President Bush and have said so here before. I noted that Bolton was one of our all-time favorite speakers in our small local chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition when he made time to speak to us in early 2012.

More to the point, I also celebrated Bolton’s appointment as National Security Advisor by President Trump. I’m sure I seized on the occasion to post the photo I had taken with Bolton just before we took off from Fort Lauderdale on a 2014 National Review cruise (below).

I was wrong. I find Bolton’s publication of his new memoir deeply dishonorable. In my opinion, it reflects poorly on his character. Former Bolton NSC deputy Fred Fleitz spoke for me this past January in his FOX News column “Ambassador Bolton, withdraw your book.” Fred commented further in an appearance on Martha MacCallum’s FOX News show last week, but I think his column nails the relevant point.

I think that President Trump has been a spectacular president on the foreign policy issues Bolton has addressed and that I have cared about over the years. I think that a return to the Obama years and worse with Joe Biden would be deeply destructive to our national interest.

Presidential elections present a binary choice. On what issue that Bolton has addressed over the years would Biden be superior to Trump? I can’t find one in Jonathan Swan’s Axios interview with Bolton.

Last week it was reported that Bolton had expressed his intent to vote for Biden. Bolton asserted the report was mistaken. Rather, he stated, he intended to “figure out a conservative Republican to vote in [sic].”

Well, that’s stupid, and that’s one thing I never thought I’d say with respect to Bolton. Again, I was wrong.

It’s enough to make you lose your lunch.

Fauci, Redfield, Hahn and Giroir testified this morning that no one ever told them to slow down the testing. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t know Trump wanted the testing slowed down.

We already know that Trump’s “wishes” were carried out with respect to Hydroxychloroquine to keep him happy. We know that minions all over the government were taking calls from Trump buddies with asks and ideas that had no legitimate purpose (other than to make some of them rich.)

And I think there’s probably very little doubt that he expressed his wishes openly to Pence, Kushner, Azar and others in the White House. The word gets out.

And anyway, they are slowing down the testing. TPM reports:

The Trump administration is ending funding and support for local COVID-19 testing sites around the country this month, as cases and hospitalizations are skyrocketing in many states.

The federal government will stop providing money and support for 13 sites across five states which were originally set up in the first months of the pandemic to speed up testing at the local level.

Local officials and public health experts expressed a mixture of frustration, resignation, and horror at the decision to let federal support lapse.

Texas will be particularly hard hit by the decision. The federal government gives much-needed testing kits and laboratory access to seven testing sites around Texas. But in the state, which is seeing new peaks in cases, people still face long lines for testing that continues to fail to meet overwhelming demand.

In Dallas County, Texas, the federal government will end support on June 30 for two testing sites it has been been supporting since March, Rocky Vaz, the director of emergency management for the city of Dallas, confirmed to TPM.

“Cases are continuing to rise in Dallas County, and we want to continue with the testing,” Vaz said.

The city of Dallas asked the federal government for an extension beyond June 30, but was refused, Vaz said.

“They told us very clearly that they are not going to extend it,” Vaz said. “We are not expecting it to continue beyond June 30, but things change.”

As the nation’s case load and deaths rise, the feds are pulling back.

Now why do you suppose that is?

This profile of Fiona Hill in the New Yorker shows just how cowardly some of the former Trump officials really are:

Kelly, who had left the Administration at the end of 2018, and McMaster, who had taken a position at Stanford, had said little publicly about Trump, and they told Hill they admired her fortitude. Bolton, who was fired in September, 2019, had decided to save his revelations for a memoir. After Hill’s testimony, he asked Sarah Tinsley, a longtime aide, to relay a personal message: “You did the right thing.”

On March 1st, Hill received an e-mail from James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense: “I’ve wanted to drop you a note paying my respects but hesitated in the immediate aftermath of your testimony to ask around for your email address. Had word leaked out that I wanted to be in touch I imagined it could/would have been misconstrued and add to the challenges you were dealing with.” He went on, “I doubt that I’ve ever felt the combination of pride, anger and contempt as I watched you testify and what followed. I was enormously proud of your demonstrated courage and poise as you stood tall; angry at those who chose to try to defame you (they failed); and contemptuous of what we witnessed in those weeks by supposed political leaders whose hear no evil, see no evil stance revealed profiles in non-courage.”

That’s very nice, I’m sure. But where were these big, strong, men when it counted? Why was it left to people like Hill, Vindeman and other unknown non-partisan government employees to step up and say what happened?

Would it have made a difference in the outcome of the impeachment? Probably not. The GOP is a zombie party and their elected officials are all the walking dead. But they would have heroes at a time when it mattered and it might have even made some of those Republicans privately acknowledge that they could not allow Trump to carry out his post-impeachment purge.

It would have been the right thing to do. Fiona Hill and the others did their duty. These important men did not.

The US ranks 26th in the world in coronavirus tests per 1 million people and 9th in deaths per 1 million. But beyond that, Trump doesn’t seem to grasp that people would still be sick and dying from Covid even if we didn’t test anyone. https://t.co/ikr7YwioxV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 23, 2020

I have come to believe that Trump is intellectually incapable of understanding this. It’s not just a strategy. The way he talks about it shows that he can only see this in terms of the numbers looking bad for him, that much we know. But I also think he truly doesn’t understand that the cases would exist whether we tested for them or not and that knowing about the cases reduces the spread because people can self-isolate and contact tracers can find those who’ve been exposed. He can’t see this, no matter how many times it’s explained to him.

This is not unlike some of his followers I saw on TV at the Arizona rally today who refuse to wear masks because the fact that they have not personally gotten sick yet proves to them that this is not a real threat. This goes beyond partisanship or belief in conspiracy theories. It’s a fundamental inability to understand how this works. It’s kind of frightening.

During the biggest health crisis of this generation, @realDonaldTrump asked his officials to slow down the one thing that could keep us safe: testing.

How many families suffered and lives were lost because of his gross criminality? #AmericaOrTrump pic.twitter.com/xWYvodknE5

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 23, 2020

I can think of 25 reasons right off the top of my head why Trump should be removed from office in November. There are probably a hundred. I think his degradation of democratic norms and his authoritarian impulses are the most important but I’m going to guess that it’s much less salient for most people than his overwhelming incompetence at dealing with a major crisis.

People can have different definitions of what constitutes presidential authority and we’ve been arguing about whose dissent should be respected since the beginning of the republic. But I think the vast majority of the public will find this cavalier disregard for Americans lives, obvious inability to understand even the basic logic of an epidemic, his dismissal of scientific expertise and his general flailing and ineptitude may have finally opened the eyes of some people who reflexively believed that Republicans are “the grown-ups” who are naturally more competent to lead the country.

So, I think this is the line of attack that may have the most resonance. As far as I’m concerned, he is the worst president in history by every possible measure. But apparently, many people bought the Fox News hype. This pandemic response, however, hits home and I suspect quite a few of his voters may be having second thoughts.

He is responsible for more American deaths than any president in history. That’s one record he can legitimately claim.

Democrats got caught flat-footed in North Carolina ten years go. The 2010 mid-term elections were not simply disastrous for their candidates. REDMAP for Redistricting Majority Project handed control of North Carolina’s state legislature (and others) to Republicans in a census year. And thus, control of drawing the districts North Carolina’s voters would live with for the next decade. Advantage: Republicans.

What ensued was a decade of radical voter suppression legislation, endless litigation on that and district lines, a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the infamous “bathroom bill,” and multiple court-ordered redraws of federal and state districts. Among other things.

Ten years after, Republicans are back. It is a census year again. (They even tried and failed to gerrymander that.) This time they have rebranded their pre-gerrymandering program as Right Lines 2020.

“Socialism starts in the states. Let’s stop it there, too,” the website by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) declares.

Shilpa Jindia writes at the Guardian that with its $125 million investment in down-ballot races, the group hopes to maintain control of 42 state legislative seats that are key to holding power in Congress and key battleground states:

In 2012, Democrats won 1.4m more votes than Republicans, yet Republicans maintained a 33-seat margin in the House. A 2019 USC study found that 59 million Americans now live under minority rule, where the party that receives the minority share of the vote in a state election controls the majority of seats in the subsequent state legislature. While both Democrats and Republicans gerrymander, Redmap changed the game.

Over half of the RSLC’s $17m contributions at the end of 2019 came from public companies and trade associations, according to an analysis by The Center for Political Accountability (CPA), which tracks corporate political spending. The largest single donor, however, was the conservative dark money group the Judicial Confirmation Network with $1.1m, the same group behind the nomination of conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh.

That name alone ought to suggest what is on the line. The last decade has made that painfully clear not only inside the Beltway. And the cost to lock in minority rule? Far less than what it costs to win the presidency.

“Redistricting historically was something that occurred behind the scenes in smoke-filled rooms and the people didn’t pay attention,” said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center. “Now it’s something that angers people.”

They might be even more angry to know corporate donors such as Citigroup, Chevron, Altria and Dominion Energy are aligning themselves with Black Lives Matter and “racial and social inequality” with one donation while advancing the RSLC’s efforts to preserve Republican minority rule with another.

‘This Is a War’

“Everybody understands this is a war that has real consequences and you’ve got one shot at it,” Li added. “It’s not like we can come back and do this two years like this; this is your moment, and if you’re going to influence what the maps look like, and who’s in power for the next decade.”

With Republicans already backing away from Donald Trump, the RSLC would just as soon let Democrats spend all their activism and money this year on the expensive presidential race while they prepare in the states for another ten-year legislative feast. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. Here is the Democrats’ chance —and yours — to prove it.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro did nothing to stop the virus, which is what Trump wanted to do. (“Let the wave wash over us”)

Trump failed miserably at the response and then punted to the states while pushing to re-open prematurely without following guidelines in order to fake an economic revival.

You can see the results of both right-wing “populists” who are supposedly looking out for the common man.

How’s that working out?

With all the high-fiving about the TikTok kids punking the Trump campaign, I had to wonder if this meant that TikTok was an unabashedly great thing for politics. It’s mostly a teen-age platform and while I’m sure the kids are all terrific I’m not sure they are equipped to know what’s real from what’s not when it comes to political propaganda.

Yep. I've been thinking about this all morning. It never goes only one way… https://t.co/hwDFoY9chA

— digby (@digby56) June 21, 2020

It literally couldn’t be worse. This is the most disgusting, outrageous conspiracy theory out there. And it’s taken off like wildfire on the platform. Will Somer who covers the right wing at the Daily Beast reports:

Get ready for Pizzagate, Round 2. 

While YouTube has tried to root out the conspiracy theory about a Democratic child sex dungeon in a Washington pizzeria by attaching a warning to those searching for the topic on its site, there’s a surprising place where Pizzagate is booming. Nearly four years after it began, the conspiracy theory is popping up all over the place on the short-form video app and Gen Z hangout spot TikTok. 

Pizzagate has become massive on TikTok, reaching plenty of young people right as the reality around them—thanks to the pandemic, police violence and related unrest, and a new Netflix documentary highlighting Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes—seems more and more unhinged. The #Pizzagate hashtag has earned more than 69 million views on the platform, while related hashtags have earned several millions more. 

https://twitter.com/kzouis/status/1273781778105241600?s=20

Take a TikTok video posted at the beginning of June. It looks like so many others: a teenager sitting in her room, while a pop song plays behind her. Rather than being about problems in school, relationships, or mainstream politics, though, this teenager is convinced that Hillary Clinton and former Clinton campaign chief John Podesta are eating children in the basement of a D.C. pizzeria.

“Search up the #pizzagate and read it all,” her texts on the screen flash. “If I die from this just know it was not an accident or suicide” 

The resurgence comes even as original Pizzagate promoters like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec flee from their associations with the conspiracy theory after it inspired an arson attack and a shooting at the restaurant. And it appears to be far more widespread than when it first began spreading in 2016. Indeed, it’s hard to overstate how huge Pizzagate is on TikTok, particularly amongst teenagers who don’t otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold. I watched hours of posts on the hashtag, and many of the young people promoting it are otherwise just interested in viral dances and Black Lives Matters.

Many of the biggest Pizzagate videos come from @_Kirie, a British teenager who regularly reaches nearly 1 million views each with each video claiming that Comet Ping Pong is the center of a pedophile ring. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. Typically, his videos are a screenshot of a ludicrous Twitter post promoting Pizzagate, with an encouragement for his followers to spread the conspiracy theory. 

Another account with more than 150,000 followers, which normally posts dance moves about historic events, declared that “2020 is the year of the pedobusters.” In another video, the person behind the account posed as Edgar Maddison Welch, the unhinged Pizzagate conspiracist who, in 2016, opened fire inside the restaurant (fortunately, no one was hurt). 

“There’s way too much that adds up in that case,” the caption reads. 

Much of the latest interest among TikTok users appears to have been fueled by bogus viral tweets claiming that Hillary Clinton is currently on trial for being a pedophile. In reality, she’s fighting a mundane court case over her private email server with Trump ally Tom Fitton and his group, Judicial Watch. Nevertheless, videos that each receive nearly 100,000 views claim that Clinton is secretly on trial for running a child sex dungeon. 

“I don’t know why no one’s talking about this,” said one TikToker in a video this week. 

Other videos claim that Justin Bieber’s song “Yummy”, released in January, is secretly about Pizzagate. Monash University professor Mark Andrejevic, who has studied conspiracy theories on TikTok, says the app’s format is ripe for promoting them. 

This just makes me depressed. And a little bit nervous. These kids don’t know the history or the dynamics of our ugly politics of the last few decades. They’re just seeing something and believing it because someone passed it on to them. They know the technology but they don’t know the context or the subtext. In some ways, they are like the elderly who get a chain letter or a Facebook post from someone they trust and believe what it says.

It’s worrying.

Update: Here’s a young influencer named Brandon Wardell. He believes in free healthcare.

And Pizzagate:

“I have very leftist politics, but I want to say I believe in Pizzagate as much as I believe people should have free healthcare. They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.”

Actually, they should be. One is political position the other is delusional nonsense. But I’m afraid the left-wing is full of people who are as ripe for this bullshit as the right.