Trump thinks his “legacy” will be his judicial appointments. And that’s true. But any Republican would have done exactly the same thing, as the GOP Senate is demonstrating as we speak with their monumental hypocrisy. They know they can’t legitimately win elections anymore so they’ve decided to rule the nation from the courts. But that has nothing to do with Trump. That’s the long-term GOP strategy. He just signed the piece of paper.
Trump real legacy is the mountain of dead Americans, most of whom wouldn’t have died were it not for his tragic ineptitude and narcissism. It’s the worst case of mass negligence in American history.
Tweeted this earlier, but suppose it cannot be said enough. Acting President Trump last night dismissed the country’s 200,000 COVID-19 dead and 7 million Americans infected with the disease as “virtual nobodies.”
"It affects virtually nobody," Trump says of the coronavirus, which has now killed 200,000 Americans and counting pic.twitter.com/qHrZvUWNhX
If Trump and the GOP win their pending court case (with or without the help of a freshly minted Supreme Court associate justice), you or your loved ones could have uninsurable preexisting conditions once they’ve killed the Affordable Care Act.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump declared on election night 2016. Seems he’s already forgotten 7 million and he’s-not-counting.
Many people are saying, you know, that virtual nobodies bests Hillary Clinton’s deplorables comment for disrespecting millions of Americans.
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Are leading Democrats the last frogs in the pot to realize they are slowly boiling?
Their need to uphold norms and reluctance to play political hardball means underdeveloped muscles will not be there when needed both in state capitols and on Capitol Hill. And when is right now. Too many seem not to realize Republicans threw out the rulebook. How many have the chops to play as rough as you can bet Republicans will?
Beltway Democrats fought pretty hard against the Brett Kavanaugh nomination and during the Trump impeachment. But pretty much by traditional rules. Meanwhile, Trump abused the legal system not to win court cases, but to stall long enough to “win” by attrition. Republican senators’ “180” on approving Supreme Court justices during a presidential election year proves again that bad faith is the only kind they practice.
Former RNC chair Michael Steele over the weekend asked Democrats a fundamental question going into this election and its aftermath: Are you built for this?
Are you ready to do what you need to do between now and January 20th? Because this isn’t just about November 3rd … Are you built for this? Because if you’re not ready to play this — I’ve been saying it from the very beginning — this is an asymmetrical game we’re in. This is not conventional politics. Stop treating Donald Trump as if he’s an actual president of the United States. He is not. He’s playing one on TV, literally. Speak to that. And so, if you’re not ready to engage against McConnell, against Lindsey Graham — because let me tell you what happens— Graham and McConnell come back to the Senate, Donald Trump goes back to the White House? It’s game, set, match, baby. There’s no stopping anything. So, if you’re not built to do what you need to do between now and January 20th, then stand down and let someone else step in. Because there’s too much on the line.
I’m not sanguine about it. Plus, I have no idea who Steele means by “someone else.”
Slate’s Jeremy Stahl runs down what might be ahead after Nov. 3. Trump might again use the courts to stall certification of presidential electors long enough to toss deciding the presidency to the House of Representatives. Scenariosexist for such a contingent election:
So how might Democrats fight back this time around? To answer that question, it’s important to understand the mechanics of the contingent election—which can be triggered by any scenario in which a majority is not reached, such as unresolved disputes over individual electoral slates. In a contingent election, the House votes on the next president by a majority vote of state delegations. This means Alaska’s one member would get one vote, all of the members from Alabama would combine to get one vote, all of the members from Arizona would combine to get one vote, and so on. A candidate would need to win 26 of 50 state delegations to be declared president. (In the Senate, meanwhile, each senator would vote respectively on the next vice president, with 51 votes necessary for victory.)
Currently, Republicans control 26 state delegations and are favored by Sabato’s site to retain that advantage. Democrats currently control 22, and the remaining two are essentially tied. Democrats need to win four additional House delegations to make Biden president in the case of a 269–269 Electoral College tie, but would need just two delegations to prevent Trump from becoming president if Pennsylvania—with a 9–9 split in the current delegation—remains tied. To get to 26 delegations after this election, Democrats would need to retain competitive seats in Iowa and Minnesota, and sweep a number of potentially competitive seats in four states from a pool of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Montana, Texas, and maybe Alaska.
Trump could still win, in theory, even if he loses the popular vote “by a 4- to 5-point margin.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cards to play to stop a Trump win in the House:
Suppose the delegation count is 24–24, with Republicans leading slightly in disputed tipping point races in two remaining states. Here is where Pelosi could step in and show herself to be the Democrats’ answer to McConnell. Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution gives the House majority the authority to “judge” any contested elections. Historically, the House has used that power to refuse to seat new members in contested races pending an investigation or a new vote. In 2018, for example, the House refused to seat the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th District after a GOP operative was caught committing fraud to swing the race.
If there’s a challenge in any decisive House district—say, over issues with mail-in ballots not being counted, or disparities in votes being disqualified for signature mismatch, or ballots getting lost in the mail—the House could simply vote not to seat the candidate claiming victory pending an inquiry, even if a given state certifies that victory.
Stahl has more at the link above. But before going down the what-if rabbit hole, activists on the Left need to put more focus on boosting turnout than on more theoretical threats like machine hacking the way the Right fixates on voter fraud. Unless there is a Dr. Diabolical out there with an electoral version of The Hitchiker’s Guide’s infinite improbability drive, what could happen in theory is still highly improbable to overwhelm massive voter turnout.
There is no indication from history or current polling to suggest voters under 45 will turn out in the numbers their elders put up. So, perhaps that too is a what-if rabbit hole. Still, younger nonvoters have the numbers to put the final nail in the coffin of the Trump presidency. IF. THEY. VOTE.
A colleague with more computing horsepower is updating my graph from 2018 with final vote counts and creating a version from the 2016 election (more comparable to this year). Year after year, these voting patterns are consistent, sadly. But the growth potential is there. If citizens under 45 only turned out in numbers comparable to those of their elders, they could run this joint, and in no time take over the Democratic Party and leadership in Congress.
It is one thing for critics on the sidelines to ask if the party is built for this. It is another to step up and show them how it’s done. They could be Steele’s someones to step in.
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This book by Mueller Prosecutor Andrew Weissman sounds like a must-read. The new York Times’ Charlie Savage reviews it and it actually has new information:
The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.
“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”
The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.
While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.
Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.
And he revealed new details — for example, writing that the same business account that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New York, and Mr. Weissmann provided no further details about the Russian payments.
Previously a mafia and Enron prosecutor and then a lawyer at the F.B.I. for Mr. Mueller, who was the bureau’s director for 12 years, Mr. Weissmann ran one of three major units for the special counsel’s office. His “Team M” prosecuted Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for numerous financial crimes. The goal was to flip him and learn whatever he knew about any Trump campaign links to Russia.
Mr. Manafort had worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, and the investigation uncovered ties by his business partner, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, to Russian intelligence. The book builds toward investigators’ discovery that Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, who flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Manafort during the campaign, asking whether Mr. Trump would permit a peace plan for Russia to essentially take over all of eastern Ukraine.
But while admitting this much, Mr. Manafort — seeing the dangle of a potential pardon from Mr. Trump — refused to cooperate further. Investigators did not obtain any final puzzle pieces and lacked the evidence to charge anyone in the campaign with a criminal conspiracy involving Russia’s covert electoral assistance.
“It would seem to require significant audacity — or else, leverage — for another nation to even put such a request before a presidential candidate,” Mr. Weissmann wrote of Mr. Kilimnik’s request. “This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, monumentally disconcerting: Namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return?”
Mr. Weissmann explained the significance of Mr. Manafort’s interactions with Mr. Kilimnik — also a major focus of a recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which explicitly labeled Mr. Kilimnik a Russian intelligence agent — more clearly than the Mueller report did.
Mr. Mueller had strictly forbidden leaks, and the special counsel team took extraordinary care to protect the high-profile, high-stakes investigation, Mr. Weissmann wrote. They kept window blind slats tilted at an angle to keep out prying eyes, shutting out natural light. They concocted an “almost comically elaborate and surreal” plan to sneak in “through the many hidden arteries of the courthouse” to obtain a grand jury indictment without tipping off reporters.
And worried about the possibility that Mr. Trump would fire them and the Justice Department would then seal off or destroy their evidence, the Mueller team members packed their numerous applications to judges for search warrants with extensive, up-to-date details about their investigation — ensuring they backed up their work beyond the reach of the executive branch.
Ty Cobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, also privately promised to be a “canary in the coal mine” and provide a heads up if Mr. Trump was going to fire the special counsel team, according to Mr. Weissmann. Mr. Cobb did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation played out against the backdrop of regular vilification of the Mueller team by Mr. Trump and his allies like Fox News’s Sean Hannity — who turned out to be in regular contact with Mr. Manafort cooking up a “smear campaign” over text messages. Mr. Weissmann, a major target, wrote that such “ad hominem” insinuations of bias appealed to emotion rather than reason.
“I am a registered Democrat,” he wrote. “Does this make Paul Manafort or any of the other 32 people our office charged any less guilty? Did Russia not attack our democracy and disrupt our election with its self-described online information warfare operation? Which facts that we alleged in our various indictments — and to which many of those we indicted, including Manafort, would plead guilty — did our attackers believe were invented as a result of our alleged bias as ‘angry Democrats?’”
Mr. Trump’s allies have recently pointed with alarm to documents showing that cellphones issued to Mr. Mueller’s team were erased during the investigation; Mr. Weissmann twice entered an incorrect passcode too often, triggering a security measure that erased his phone. In an interview, he portrayed the concerns as a “tempest in a teapot” and said his understanding was that all emails and other such data from phones were backed up. He called on the Justice Department to release information about the special counsel’s data backup system.
Mr. Weissmann also wrote that he is not “anti-Trump” but rather “pro the rule of law.” Still, the distinction is less than clear in a book that also portrays Mr. Trump as a liar and a dangerous demagogue trying “to peel the world around him away from the rule of law — away from reason itself — and mold it to accommodate his desire for unchecked power.”
I don’t know if there will even be hearings for the replacement for Ruth Bade Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, but if there are, they should be very exciting if either of these two people are nominated. Joan McCarter at Daily Kos has the rundown:
The Federalist Society’s list of approved Supreme Court nominees, from which the nominee will be drawn, has a handful of youngish women wingnuts, two of whom seem to top the list for the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The two sucking up most of the oxygen in the speculation, and whom power-addled Donald Trump seems to be able to keep in his head, are over-the-top extremist and extremist: Amy Coney Barrett, representing TheHandmaid’s Tale as societal model wing, and Barbara Lagoa, the quid pro quo choice.
Starting with Barrett: She does indeed belong to an extreme, charismatic wing of the Catholic Church called People of Praise, which actually did serve as the inspiration for Margaret Atwood in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was published in 1985 after Atwood “delayed writing it for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,” she told The New York Times Book Review in 1986. “Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.” Specifically: “There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids. They don’t go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book—sit down and shut up.” Yeah, that’s Barrett’s church. Except they’ve dropped the “head” moniker for male leadership and “handmaids” title for women who keep their fellow women in line because the television series based on the novel forced a change. They are now all called “leaders,” who direct such intimate life decisions of members as who they marry, where they live, and how they raise their children.
Barrett herself has said that a “legal career is but a means to an end […] and that end is building the Kingdom of God.” So that’s fun. She’s also written that judges shouldn’t necessarily be held to upholding Supreme Court precedents like Roe v. Wade, which she almost certainly would vote to restrict out of existence. Barrett’s religion came up briefly in her confirmation hearing for her current position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein mentioned: “The dogma lives loudly within you,” and the entire Republican world erupted, accusing Feinstein of trying to impose an unconstitutional “religious test” on nominees. The issue pretty much ended there. It can’t end there in hearings should Trump nominate Barrett. That is, if McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham don’t just decide to forego hearings and send her straight to the floor. At this point, McConnell could probably get 51 Republican senators to do anything for Trump.
In her position on the 7th, Barrett’s most telling decision thus far is to deter colleges and universities from vigorously investigating sexual assault allegations by making it easier for students accused of assault to challenge the handling of their cases. Barrett based her decision on reverse gender discrimination, writing in a case against Purdue University: “It is plausible that [university officials] chose to believe Jane because she is a woman and to disbelieve John because he is a man,” turning what might have been a more straightforward due process issue into a gender bias question. So that’s Barrett.
Barbara Lagoa rocketed onto the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals courtesy of McConnell’s judicial juggernaut. She is a 52-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles and she was born in Miami, Florida. Not only has Trump talked about the great political advantage he could get in Florida with a Supreme Court pick, there’s more quid pro quo here. Lagoa is right now considering Trump campaign chief Jason Miller’s $100 million libel lawsuit against Gizmodo. The suit stems from a 2018 report on the now-defunct website Splinter that Miller slipped an abortion pill into a smoothie he gave to a woman he had gotten pregnant. The allegations arose in a custody dispute brought by another woman, Trump staffer A.G. Delgado, who had a child by Miller. Gizmodo is Splinter’s parent company. A district court judge in Miami threw the suit out a year ago, Miller appealed, and now Lagoa is considering it. If she were worthy of a Supreme Court seat, she would either recuse herself from Miller’s case or she would remove herself from consideration for SCOTUS. Neither, not surprisingly, has happened yet.
Lagoa is, of course, a Federalist Society member and in tight with Florida Republicans. So tight that a flood of text messages and calls from Florida poured into the White House and Justice Department over the weekend, “several people with knowledge of the discussions” told the Post. They’re making very little effort to say this is about anything other than the importance of Florida in November. “She is a Cuban woman from Miami, and Florida is the most important state in the election,” said Jesse Panuccio, former Trump Justice official and a member of the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission.
The quid pro quo doesn’t really stop with the Miller case, either. Lagoa just gave Trump a big gift in concurring in the decision to impose a poll tax on former felons in Florida, preventing as many as 85,000 eligible voters from casting ballots. She’s already been under fire from Senate Democrats for not recusing herself from the case, a failure which “appears to violate the Code of Conduct for United States Judges” given her role last year in an advisory opinion handed down by the Florida Supreme Court on which she sat at the time. She’s anti-labor, of course, and as a Catholic, a forced birther.
These are dumpster fire candidates, neither worthy of Ruth Badger Ginsburg’s seat. They’re not worthy of their current seats, Barrett by virtue of her lived rejection of the establishment clause and Lagoa over a proven disregard for ethics.
I would hope we all realize, after living through the Clarence Thomas hearings, that any suggestion that either of these women are bad for women will be met with shrill accusations that we are discriminating against them because they are women. or Catholics or something.
Just as Thomas shut everything down with his claim that he was the victim of a “high tech lynching” despite the fact that the women who accused him were also Black, they are shameless and will use anything to get their way. It’s actually not a new thing, it’s just that McConnell and Trump have adopted it as the party’s only philosophy and commercial brand.
It would be one thing if they only wanted to kill themselves for Donald Trump. But they’re more than willing to kill the rest of us too. This report was from Jeremy Diamond at CNN:
Ohio’s Republican @LtGovHusted tried to encourage Trump supporters to wear masks.
Here’s how it went:
“I’m trying to make masks in America great again and I’ve got President Trump’s masks,” Husted said as he whipped out Trump-branded masks.
He was immediately & loudly booed. Even as he showed off several Trump 2020 branded masks, Husted was repeatedly booed by the mostly maskless crowd that is tightly packed into an airplane hangar in Vandalia, OH
“I know we all don’t like wearin’ em,” he said as he face more boos. “Hang on now, hang on. I get it.” He even tried suggesting the masks were for when you’re forced to wear them in a grocery store.
More boos.
Finally, he relented & moved on to other campaign issues: “You made your point, got it.”
200,000 dead now. And the case count and death count are getting ready to rise again. Bigly.
For the final two months of the 2020 presidential blitz against Joe Biden, Team Trump plans to hammer away at the new Supreme Court vacancy—gleeful at the angst it will cause on the left and shrugging off prospects that it could incite even more civil unrest across the country. They believe that the end result will be further juicing of their base turnout and, in turn, the rescuing of their campaign in an increasingly difficult race.
Trump’s latest messaging reset comes at a time when GOP operatives and prominent party allies are thrilled to divert attention from other major issues that have threatened to doom Republicans this November: mainly, the president’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic, and his equally hamfisted handling of widespread protests against racism in policing that have raged for months.
“The president has said he wants this to be the biggest issue driving his campaign for the next two months. Period,” said a senior administration official. “Frankly, there’s no reason it shouldn’t… He has said this is a fight that will define his legacy.”
He said this morning that he wanted the vote before the election so I guess we’re talking about a “big show” vote on the eve of the election? Jesus Christ.
His legacy will be his talent for being president when Supreme Court Justices retire and die and his ability to sign a piece of paper The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo puts in front of him.
And anyway the idea that he’s going to “stay on message” for the next 45 days?
As Donald Trump was considering who should succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court in the summer of 2018, he met for lunch with Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani at his private golf club in West Palm Beach. According to a source briefed on the conversation, Hannity and Giuliani argued that Trump should nominate Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appeals court judge and Notre Dame law professor, because her conservative credentials would mobilize the president’s base. “Hannity and Rudy said, ‘You’re going to have a confirmation fight anyways, so pick Barrett,’” the source said. Trump told them he was going to pick Brett Kavanaugh, whom he viewed as a safer choice.
With 43 days left until the election, Trump is itching for a fight as he moves quickly to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat. “This nomination is a fuck-you to the left,” a Republican close to the White House told me. Two years later Barrett is the front-runner. According to a source, Trump told Federalist Society cochairman Leonard Leo prior to Ginsburg’s death that he would nominate Barrett to fill her seat if it opened up. The White House did not provide comment.
Barrett’s divisive positions on issues like abortion, which held her back last time, could now be seized upon to goad the left into a culture-war battle in the campaign’s waning months. “It would be malpractice not to nominate Barrett,” former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg told me. “You’ll have a Catholic judicial legal powerhouse who will be attacked by the left,” he said. “This will be especially useful in Pennsylvania to remind Catholic voters that [Joe Biden] supports third-term abortions.” (Biden, also a Catholic, “has not explicitly expressed support for late-term abortions,” notes NPR.) Other sources, however, said Trump is strongly considering Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban-American federal appeals court judge from Florida. Lagoa, it’s believed, would help secure a Florida victory in November.
The SCOTUS drama has infused the Trump campaign with renewed optimism after it has been battered by weeks of devastating book bombshells, widening polls, and a U.S. coronavirus death toll nearing 200,000. Just one day after Ginsburg’s death, the MAGA faithful were chanting, “Fill that seat!” at Trump’s North Carolina rally—and the campaign is already selling T-shirts with the slogan. Sources said Trump sees selecting Ginsburg’s replacement as if he is scripting a new story line in the reality show he’s producing. “I guarantee you he parades female judges through the White House every day for the next week,” a former official said. “This is his thing. He loves the nomination guessing game.”
Some Republicans I spoke to even likened the Ginsburg shocker to Jim Comey reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation: a black swan event that fundamentally altered the trajectory of the race. “This is a game changer. It just changed the calculus for any conservatives who were on the fence voting for Trump,” a former West Wing official told me. “There’s a long way to go, and there has to be another shoe to drop, but the Supreme Court development is a good one,” said a prominent Republican.
There is an element of magical thinking to this rosy view of the race. Biden remains solidly ahead in every credible poll, both nationally and in key battleground states, as early voting is underway in Virginia, Minnesota, and elsewhere. But some echoes of 2016 are impossible to ignore. Trump’s willingness to violate social distancing rules and repeat lies on an epic scale has allowed his rallies and outrageous remarks to dominate the news cycle. Meanwhile, Biden is running a cautious campaign that seems willing to let Trump command the media’s attention. As he barnstorms the country, Trump is putting little effort into readying himself for next week’s debate moderated by Chris Wallace. Sources said Trump is having occasional conversations with chief strategist Jason Miller and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. “Basically what happens is they sit around and throw questions at Trump. But Trump just kind of does his thing,” the former West Wing official said. Added another Republican source: “Trump is just not taking it seriously.”
I’m not sure it matters if he’s “preparing” for the debates. Debating him is like debating a feral animal anyway. Remember, he called Hillary Clinton the devil to her face. He said tht if he was president she’d be in jail.
It’s not going to be a debate. It’s a cage match. And we’ll just have to see if Joe Biden can handle it better than say, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio.
Over the past five years or so, I’ve had no problem using the “F” word (fascism) to describe what’s been happening under President Trump and the Republican Party. I wrote about it here in Salon all the way back in 2015, noting that I wasn’t the only one. In fact, it was his fellow Republicans who were the first to use the term to describe him. All you have to do is go back and read that full-page newspaper ad Trump took out in 1989, headlined “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police,” to understand his fundamental authoritarian nature.
Even though we knew from the beginning that we were dealing with an essentially authoritarian leader, our awareness of it has sometimes been subsumed amid the sheer chaos of daily news over the past five years. But if you look at the various issues Trump is most obsessed with, whether it was the lurid obsession with terrorist violence and refugees during the 2016 campaign or his preoccupation with immigrants, the pardoning of war criminals, his flirtations with dictators, the endless threats to jail his political opponents and muzzle the press, the valorizing of the Confederacy and the openly racist “law and order” campaign of this year, it’s pretty clear what gets him excited — along with his devoted following.
But wait, you say: Donald Trump only cares about himself! He’s not interested in anything as abstract as “issues,” not even the ones that tickle his lizard brain. But these are not mutually exclusive things. You see, Donald Trump genuinely believes he is scientifically superior to all those “others” and that they must be kept in check, with whatever level of violence may be necessary.
He doesn’t talk about this a whole lot, but it definitely comes up from time to time. Just this past weekend in Minnesota, in the midst of one of his most rambling, racist rallies in a long while, Trump said this, startling quite a few people who perhaps weren’t aware of his deep and abiding belief in eugenics:
As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us. https://t.co/CHMLg804mp
Trump is poorly educated, so he probably doesn’t even know that such language evokes Nazi Germany’s eugenics program and Adolf Hitler’s theory of the “master race,” especially when discussing the notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford. But it’s clear enough that regardless of the historical context, Trump is on Ford’s wavelength when it comes to eugenics.
He’s talked about “bloodlines” line before, weirdly telling a group of British businessmen in 2018 that “you’ve all got such good bloodlines in this room.You’ve all got such amazing DNA.'” He obviously didn’t know anything about their “bloodlines,” but made the assumption they must be amazing because they were a bunch of rich, successful white, men.
“I’m a big believer in natural ability,” Trump told me during a discussion about his leadership traits, which he said came from a natural sense of how human relations work. “If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn’t be eating his lunch. He doesn’t have that psychology and he never will because it’s not in his DNA.” Later in this discussion, Trump said: “I believe in being prepared and all that stuff. But in many respects, the most important thing is an innate ability.”
Perhaps Trump’s conviction that DNA — not life experience — is everything explains why he proudly claims that he’s “basically the same” today as when he was a boy. “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same,” he said. “The temperament is not that different.”
The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump’s belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He’s absolutely convinced that America’s problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not. And people get what they deserve. In his case, that includes the White House.
According to D’Antonio, Donald Trump Jr. also told him that he believes in the racehorse theory as well, and that he too is “in the high percentile on the bell curve,” although his father scores even higher.
In Trump’s case, the belief that he has “great genes” means that he is not required to study or consult experts or really ever bother to learn anything. He explained this to the Washington Post back in 2016:
He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.” He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: “A lot of people said, ‘Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.’ ”
This was most recently demonstrated in his bizarre comments at the CDC last March:
You’ll note that he mentions once again that his uncle, John Trump — an electrical engineer and inventor — taught at MIT, which he believes confers on him the same level of intelligence because of their shared genes.
For Trump, this isn’t just idle talk about an accomplished relative. It is central to his understanding of the world and his ability to navigate it. He simply does whatever he feels like in the moment, secure in the knowledge that it must be right because his instincts are superior to any book learning due to his great “bloodlines”:
It’s easy to laugh at Trump’s foolishness or assume that he’s just blathering on as usual. But consider his obvious willingness to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans to the deadly pandemic for his own purposes. As he has put it, “We’ll let it wash over the country” and achieve “herd mentality.” Or what about the horrific conditions at the border over the past three years, most recently the accusations that doctors are performing hysterectomies and other sterilization procedures on immigrant women against their will. Think about what former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor reported: “This was the president of the United States who looked at me and told me, when we’re deciding who to let in to the U.S., he didn’t want us to accept people who had quote, ‘missing toes or funny foreheads.’ This is how the president talks about human beings.”
Trump’s absurd talk about his “good German genes” doesn’t sound so funny when you consider his policies. Somewhere along the line, all these words of his and all the actions of his administration come together in a pattern in which his belief in eugenics fits right in with a program that looks an awful lot like that “F” word.
