This is from Ted Lieu, who happens to not only be a great national congressman but a wonderful constituent representative as well:

Coronavirus Updates and Resources from Rep. Lieu

Dear neighbor, 

We are now in our third and most severe wave of this pandemic. As of December 3, Los Angeles County has its highest daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations at 2,572 individuals. Since early November, the average number of daily cases has increased by 225% and the case positivity rate has risen dramatically from 3.9% on November 1 to 13.0% on December 2. These numbers are alarming and can only be turned around if each and every one of us does our part to stop the spread. This means washing our hands frequently; engaging in physical distancing; wearing a face covering in public; and following public health guidelines. 

Below you will find information on the latest state and local safety measures. I understand these restrictions are taking a great toll on all of us, especially on our local CA-33 businesses.

Despite the obstacles we face, I am confident in our ability to meet this challenge together. I know it isn’t easy, but your continued efforts to protect the health of our community are deeply appreciated.

Your Weekly Reminder:

1. This is a difficult and uncertain period for all of us, when many are feeling stressed, anxious or depressed. If you are feeling this way, please know that you are not alone. If you need someone to talk to, please call the LA County Department of Mental Health hotline at (800) 854-7771 or text “LA” to 741741. Please also view the CDC’s guidance for coping with stress and anxiety during a pandemic.
   
2. In the middle of a pandemic, ensuring Californians have access to quality, affordable health care options is more important than ever. Californians can sign up for health care coverage now through Covered California’s open enrollment period. Consumers who shop health care plans during this time will benefit from California’s lowest rate change of 0.5% for 2021. To learn more and shop and compare plans, please visit coveredca.com.
   
3. Please remember to get your flu shot to stay healthy this season. It is likely that both COVID-19 and the flu will be present at the same time in LA County this year. You can get a flu shot at any local pharmacy. For quick flu facts and frequently asked questions about COVID-19 and the flu, click here. 
   
4. Los Angeles County and its partner, Healthvana, have created a new contact tracing system to empower those who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 to anonymously notify their close contacts. Since April, Healthvana has delivered test results to those tested at county-operated sites via text or email. With this new system, messages alerting patients of a positive test result will include a link that allows individuals to enter the contact information of any recent close contacts so they can be notified of their potential exposure. Another way to support contact tracing in LA County is by downloading SafePass, a mobile app to help contain the spread of COVID-19. For more on contact tracing in LA County, please click here.
   
5. Have you witnessed fraud, waste, or abuse of coronavirus pandemic relief funds? Congress has approved over $3 trillion in federal spending to combat the pandemic and I am committed to ensuring your tax dollars are being spent properly. I encourage you to visit coronavirus.house.gov/contact/tip-line or call 202-225-4400 today to report waste, fraud, or abuse of COVID-19 funds. 

COVID-19 Updates

As cases surge across our state and county, many of the COVID-19 restrictions currently in place are subject to change within the next few days. I want to provide you with the relevant resources so you can stay up to date on the latest developments. For recent coronavirus updates from the state of California, including details about the new Regional Stay at Home Order, please visit covid19.ca.gov. For updates from Los Angeles County, please visit covid19.lacounty.gov.

The LA County Department of Public Health is encouraging all residents to stay home as much as possible in the coming weeks to flatten the curve and save lives. Please remember to stay home; reduce mingling with those outside of your household; and wear a face covering outside of your home. 

Additional Information

1. All LA County residents who would like to get tested should first contact their Primary Care Provider to see if they offer COVID-19 tests. If you cannot access a test through your provider, LA County is offering free testing. Please get tested if you:
   
   • Have symptoms related to COVID-19.
   • Were asked to get tested by LA Public Health because of a contact tracing investigation.
   • Were in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past two weeks.
   • Work or live in a skilled nursing facility; group home; residential care facility; homeless shelter; or correctional facility.
   • Are experiencing homelessness.
   • Are an essential worker with frequent contact with the public.
   • Don’t have symptoms but believe you may have been exposed to COVID-19. 
     
2. Today, LA County launched free and FDA-approved at-home COVID testing. For more information, please click here.
   
   
   
3. If you live in the City of LA and are unable to drive to a testing site, you can receive a free COVID-19 test at a mobile pop-up location (no appointment necessary). Please click here to view current and upcoming pop-up testing sites.
   
4. For updated data on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in California and LA County, please go to update.covid19.ca.gov and publichealth.lacounty.gov.
   
5. If your small business has been affected by the pandemic, you may be eligible for federal tax credits. To learn more, please click here. 
   
   
   
   
6. Last week, Mayor Garcetti announced that all travelers entering the City of Los Angeles from another state or city will be required to fill out an online form to ensure acknowledgement of California’s 14-day quarantine period and the state’s new travel advisory. All passengers arriving at LAX or Van Nuys Airport must fill out the form at travel.lacity.org before or upon arrival. LAX is also now offering contactless food ordering and pick-up via LAXOrderNow.com.
   
7. This week was United Against Hate Week, when we recommit to standing up against hate together. If you or someone you know has experienced a hate incident, please call 2-1-1 to report it.
   
8. If you are in need of childcare services due to the pandemic, please visit mychildcare.ca.gov to find information on licensed childcare providers near you. 
   
9. If you are looking for a new job or want to build job skills, the LA County Library has established a Work Ready program for you. To sign up, please click here.
   
10. Governor Newsom announced additional financial assistance for California businesses struggling as a result of the pandemic. The state will provide temporary tax relief for eligible businesses and, in partnership with the Legislature, $500 million in COVID-19 Relief Grant funding for small businesses. It will also increase funding for the California Rebuilding Fund by $12.5 million. These measures will be crucial to supporting vulnerable California small businesses, which are the foundation of the state’s economy. To learn more about the new assistance, please click here.
    
11. Johnson & Johnson has launched its Phase 3 ENSEMBLE trial to evaluate the efficacy (whether it works) and safety of Janssen’s investigational vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19. The ENSEMBLE trial aims to recruit up to 60,000 participants and is being conducted with the highest scientific and ethical standards. It is essential to include all types of people in clinical trials when researching and developing new vaccines in order to help ensure they are safe and effective for those disproportionately impacted. To learn more about Johnson & Johnson’s ENSEMBLE trial and determine if you are eligible to participate in the study, visit www.ensemblestudy.com. A clinical trial site near CA-33 is located at Anthony Mills, MD, Inc. at 9201 W Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.
    
12. On December 3rd, Los Angeles County launched the Keep LA County Dining Grant Program to help restaurants impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. The program will provide $30,000 for eligible businesses to use for employee payroll, outstanding expenses, adaptive business practices to be able to stay open, and more. Preference will be given to restaurants that offered outdoor dining as of November 24th, 2020. Businesses that have already received assistance through LA County CARES Act programs are not eligible for this program. For additional information, please visit keeplacountydining.lacda.org.* The application period opened on Thursday, December 3rd and will extend through Sunday, December 6th at 11:59 p.m.
    
    
    
    *Please note: Due to technical issues, the Keep LA County Dining website is temporarily down. The LA County Development Authority is working to resolve the issue. Please check here for updates. 
    
13. If you are unable to pay your rent due to financial strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, please visit housingiskey.com for tenant rights, a rent relief guide and more.
    
    
    
14. Through the COVID-19 Safety Compliance Certification Program, businesses owners can become trained on required safety protocols at no cost. Once they finish the program, they will receive a certificate and window seal to display at their establishment to reassure customers and employees that safety is their top priority. To learn more and become certified, please click here. 
    
15. If you volunteer or are an organization looking to recruit volunteers, please view this guidance on volunteer safety. For information on how to get involved, visit californiavolunteers.ca.gov.  
    
16. This week, Los Angeles County launched the Community Equity Fund to help prevent COVID-19 transmission in communities disproportionately impacted by the virus. Through this initiative, LA County seeks to address the inequities in COVID-19 prevention measures in some of the hardest-hit areas by partnering with 51 community-based organizations (CBOs) on the ground and providing them with funding, training, and technical assistance. To learn more about the Community Equity Fund, please click here.
    
17. LA City Mayor Garcetti recently announced emergency relief for food-service workers who have suffered a financial blow due to COVID-19 restrictions. The Secure Emergency Relief for Vulnerable Employees (SERVE) initiative will provide 4,000 local food-service workers with a one-time $800 stipend. Please click here to determine if you are eligible.
    
18. Mayor Garcetti also announced a new program to help deliver internet access to young students who need it the most. The Angeleno Connectivity Trust (ACT) will offer 100 GB of free internet connectivity to vulnerable students, including those in foster care, experiencing homelessness, and youth with disabilities. To find more information on ACT, please go to lamayor.org/Connectivity.  
    
19. If you or someone you know needs food, please visit covid19.lacounty.gov/food or call 2-1-1.
    
20. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued new mask guidelines, urging people who live in areas where coronavirus is spreading to wear a face covering at all times in public spaces. To download and read through the new guidelines, please click here.  
    
    
    
21. Although we continue to face challenges brought on by this pandemic, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday, Governor Newsom unveiled the first details of the state’s vaccine distribution plan. The first batch of vaccines will be distributed to health care workers in both clinical and non-clinical settings. To learn more about vaccine distribution, please click here. 

With coronavirus cases rising in our area, we are all counting on each other to take the necessary precautions this holiday season. By washing our hands frequently, engaging in physical distancing, and wearing a mask in public, we are each playing our part in protecting our community. For more information on the coronavirus, please visit my coronavirus webpage, covid19.ca.gov and/or covid19.lacounty.gov. For frequent updates, please follow me on my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Remember – by staying home, you are saving lives. I look forward to updating you again soon. 

Stay safe. 

Sincerely,

Ted W. Lieu
Member of Congress

His staff is as good as he is. I recently had a constituent issue with which they all immediately helped me, with compassion and concern. People in my personal orbit were surprised because they are conservatives who believe that government is unresponsive.

I’m lucky, I know. But this is how it can be for everyone if they elect the right people.

Buzzfeed News:

Caught between an angry president convincing millions of people that the election was stolen on one side, and reality on the other side, Republican senators have plotted out a path through the middle to avoid enraging their supporters: Settle in, do nothing, and wait for this all to blow over.

[…]

But outside of a handful of die-hard Trump loyalists led by Rudy Giuliani, no one is getting tough. Republicans widely accept the results of the election, but rather than saying so, they defer to the president’s right to exhaust his legal challenges. Republicans who have dared articulate that President-elect Joe Biden won the election have earned blistering attacks or thinly veiled threats from the president.

Nothing in the article confirms the clickbait headline: Republican Senators Say It’s Not Their Job To Actually Tell People That Biden Won The Election.

Still, I agree it is not their job … every time a troll complains, “Why didn’t you mention when Democrats did [blank], HUH?!” I think, because it’s not my job to do your messaging for you.

Still, it is Republican officials’ duty not to undermine the republic they swore to “support and defend … against all enemies, foreign and domestic” in “true faith and allegiance.” That’s not asking too much, is it?

But pushing back on the outgoing president’s fiction that Democrats stole the election from him is too much to ask, apparently. And they have a ready excuse for not doing so.

“Democrats for eight years called George Bush an illegitimate president. Even when he was reelected they called him an illegitimate president,” said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, referencing the 2000 Florida recount famously ended by a Republican majority on the Supreme Court.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a loyal supporter of President Trump’s who just won reelection, presented half the country rejecting election results as a possible new normal. People who hated Trump spent years arguing that he was illegitimately brought to power by Russian election interference, he said.

My memory might be a bit fuzzy or my hearing bad. Bitterness over the Florida recount and the Supreme Court’s intervention I remember. Questions about Russian interference in 2016 I remember. But I don’t recall hearing what Lankford and Graham claim they heard about illegitimacy. Not from Democrats of any prominence, anyway. It all sounds like the “evidence” with which Rudy Giuliani and his legal buzzards just lost their 45th case. Argument by anecdote and bald-faced assertion. I could be wrong. They never admit to being wrong.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1335015018493071362?s=20

A close friend used to have this joke he made in response to unsupported assertions like these. His stock response was, “Oh, yeah? Name five.”

“What will the Republicans say?” state- and county-level Democrats said, recoiling. They flinched almost like abused dogs here a decade after the electoral wipeout of 1994. Bold, forward-looking proposals? No way. Republicans would use them as cudgels against Democratic candidates. Like the Green New Deal today.

Have Democrats learned that it matters not what they do? If Republicans don’t have a ready campaign issue, they’ll just make something up.

Democrats winning both U.S. Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia on Jan. 5 is a long shot. Even if they gain control of the Senate that control will likely be fleeting. Two years at best. Like control of the U.S. House which could go away in the 2022 mid-term elections.

Joe Biden’s administration will have limited time to work whatever it can manage to shore up this beleaguered republic with or without Senate control.

David Roberts of Vox agrees, “Biden could face total congressional opposition, even impeachment — as the recent baseless ‘stolen election’ narrative has shown, if Republicans don’t have any evidence, they’ll just make something up.”

Roberts believes Biden going slow is a recipe for failure in the face of the relentless propaganda campaign it can expect even before Day 1.

The Obama administration in which Biden served as vice president believed in 2009 its political capitol and maneuvering room was limited. The country was in a deep recession and Obama’s team felt it could take on only one fight at a time, hoping to find a few Republican votes to pass its stimulus package and health care reform. Republicans met Obama with bad-faith arguments and and a wall of opposition that dragged out passage of the Affordable Care Act until March 2010. That was Obama’s high-water mark.

Knowing what to expect, going that route again is a fool’s game. Biden should not play by Republican rules. He should not attempt to tackle pressing issues one at a time, Roberts writes. Biden should run a blitz: Do everything at once:

By constantly blundering forward, Trump has helped chart which US institutions and norms provide real resistance and which don’t. The courts have tangibly restrained Trump; they have been the primary bulwark against him. But the chattering of the media and the political classes? Moral outrage? Precedent and tradition? Civil protest?

All of these have proven gossamer. Trump charged right through them like they were cotton candy. By constantly acting, being on the offensive, generating new stories and controversies, he simply overwhelmed the ability of the system to fasten on any one thing.

Biden should learn the lesson. All that matters is what gets done, put on paper and into law. The rest is vapor.

The administration should staff up as rapidly as possible with ambitious young progressives and tell every single civil servant that the next two years are going to be a full sprint. Start immediately rewriting and reimplementing the environmental, public health, and worker safety regulations Trump has weakened. Reverse his immigration policies. Drop his lawsuits.

Reassess the social cost of carbon. Replace Trump’s weak Affordable Clean Energy rule with more stringent carbon rules for the power sector. Ditch EPA’s “secret science” rule and restock scientific advisory boards with actual scientists. Put a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling leases on public land. Pledge the purchasing power of the federal government — around $500 billion a year — toward clean energy technology.

Etc. Let Republicans call Democrats socialists or communists. They will anyway. Let Biden’s response be actions, not talk. By January 2023, Republicans could try impeaching him anyway. For what does not matter. They will make something up.

Flood the zone with actions the way Republicans “flood the zone with shit.” There will be failures as well as actions that will fall short of campaign promises. Progressives will be frustrated, Roberts writes. But with limited clout and a two-year time frame for action, actions are what’s needed. Yardage gained. Points on the board.

Biden’s best chance is to try to overwhelm the system the way Trump did, by doing so much that it’s impossible to make any one thing into a lasting story. He should launch so many simultaneous reforms that there’s no time for right-wing media to make up lies about all of them or for the Supreme Court to hear them all. He should ignore bad-faith attacks and stay relentlessly on message about what’s gotten done and what’s getting done next. He should, at every juncture, get caught trying to make government work better for ordinary people.

Democrats’ haphazard national messaging must improve, too, if they are to support measurably improving people’s lives in the short term so they can do more down the road. (I know a few people, and so does Roberts.)

Failing that, as surely they will, Democrats should, Roberts recommends, “get persistent party infrastructure on the ground in communities the party has neglected.” But the party already has persistent infrastructure on the ground (well, in about 80% of them anyway). The problem is it is decrepit, under-resourced and under-trained — ineffective both at turning out votes and at changing minds. What needs to be persistent is party presence in communities between elections. Howard Dean tried to build that. I continue to. Numerous groups have floated innovative ideas for voter engagement, but for actualizing them outside major cities they lack even the persistent infrastructure of sleepy, local party committees.

The kind of “woke” Democrats need out there is not so much ideological as institutional. But as Vote Forward, Mobilize America and others know, to have persistent efforts requires a vital organization as a nexus for mobilizing. Unions once filled that role. Party committees in some places still do, just not in the rural places Roberts means.

Why not? Because there is no money behind it and no career advancement in it for aggressive young organizers. The billions raised every general election flow into individual campaign coffers for winning specific races for specific candidates, not into state and local committees for creating persistent, effective infrastructure in between elections. They languish. I wish I had a solution for that. Those who think they do form yet another nonprofit and begin fundraising online for themselves the way candidates do, and progressive efforts diffuse rather than focus.

For now,

The best thing Biden can do, morally and politically, is act, as much and as fast as possible, and then talk about it, and do more of it, and talk about it more. (And he should be clear about exactly who stands in the way of bigger, better changes, and why his name is Mitch McConnell.)

The rest of it, he should ignore: the Washington chatter about the latest Republican accusations or catty infighting among Democratic factions, the cable news story or Twitter drama of the day, the latest offensive thing Trump or some Trump surrogate said, all of it. Bulldoze through it.

Actions speak louder.

Colonel, an Asian elephant at the Fort Worth Zoo, enjoys a nap in the pool pic.twitter.com/tBFTGJKTKY

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) December 2, 2020

Poachers have devastated Africa’s savanna elephant population. The Great Elephant Census reveals that in just seven years, 30% of the species has been wiped out. Unless things change, the population will be halved in less than a decade.

These organizations are working to help and protect these elephants, and you can support their efforts to keep this species from going extinct.

• Wildlife Conservation Society
• WildAid’s “Be Ivory Free” campaign
• Save the Elephants – Elephant Crisis Fund
• Elephants Without Borders
• African Wildlife Foundation
• International Elephant Foundation – Mounted Horse Patrol

White House reporter Brian Karem, one of the reporters Trump hates more than anyone, spoke with Michael Cohen about what Trump is planning. I’m always interested in Cohen’s thoughts on this because I think he understands Trump better than most:

In all the talk about which Trump cronies might receive pardons in his final lame-duck weeks, there is one name that never comes up: Michael Cohen. After a dozen years as Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Cohen famously broke with his boss in 2018. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison, although because of the pandemic he was released this past May to serve out his sentence under house arrest.

Cohen believes Trump has “done the math” and figures that, of his 74 million voters, he could successfully con about 20 million of them to continue donating money to him. “He’s very bright when it comes to figuring out angles and money,” Cohen explained in an interview for my podcast Just Ask the Question. “But he knows he can’t go back to real estate and he knows he has to leave the White House in January. But if he can get a large enough number of his supporters to send him money—then he’s set. That’s what he wants.”

“I wish him nothing for Christmas,” Cohen said. “Except what he deserves.”

Karem thinks Trump doesn’t care how crazed his followers become as long as it doesn’t get too violent. I don’t know why he thinks that. I think he’s fine with violence, in fact would enjoy saying “I told you so” and using it as a way to blame to Democrats for “rigging” the election.

He gets off on violence — witness his “dominate, dominate, dominate!” attitude during the George Floyd protests last summer. He would certainly find a way to use it to his advantage.

Cohen also spoke to New York Magazine:

Is there a strategy behind the tantrum Trump has been throwing since November 3? 
It’s all a shameless con job. He sees his claims of fraud as driving up donations — there’s nothing behind it beyond greed. Trump is using the moment to raise money. The number is actually shockingly large, over $150 million, a majority of it from small-dollar donations. This money is not going to his Election Defense Fund; it’s to keep him relevant in the GOP and launch his media brand. It’s all about money and power, and you need one to get the other.

Does he really believe massive election fraud took place?
There is that part of him that cannot accept losing. In his mind, the only way Biden could have won is through fraud. He has convinced himself of a narrative and is being fed back what he wants to hear from sycophants. The only one of these scumbags who truly believes this crap is Sidney Powell, but she is legitimately insane.

Assuming he can be removed from the Oval Office, what next?
The money he’s raising is going toward the Save America PAC, which will be the base from which he establishes an entire parallel system of government. I call it the Republic of MAGAstan, and its capital will be in Florida at Mar-a-Lago. He’s also going to have his own 24/7 media platform with Trump TV, which will be an unholy alliance between Newsmax, OANN, and whoever he can drag from the swamp looking for relevance. He’ll continue to suck from the veins of his MAGA faithful while chipping away at the Biden presidency, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. All of this is in service of a Trump 2024 run for president and his return to power. If this happens, all bets are off. He will try to change the Constitution and give himself a third term.

Yesterday the New York Times reported that Trump has been discussing pardoning his three oldest children as well as Jared Kushner and Rudy Giuliani over concerns that the Biden administration may seek retribution against them. Do you think he’ll issue those pardons?
If Donald Trump believed the pardons would be a slam-dunk benefit to him, he would already have signed off. Unfortunately for him, he is painfully aware that there are negative repercussions to such an action that could place him, his children, and his company in significant legal trouble. It is why he is proceeding cautiously.

The idea that he’s concerned about “retribution” is what’s known as deflection. Donald Trump knows that he, his children, and Kushner have all violated the law. And it’s not about retribution; it’s about an investigation that would most certainly lead to a conviction. He’s doing an act in advance of what he knows is coming down the pipeline. He’s already laying the groundwork for the premise of why he believes he must pardon his family: not because of their own dirty deeds but because of retribution. It’s all about distraction and deflection.

In your book, Disloyal, you tell a fascinating story about the socialite Patricia Kluge and how Trump slyly leveraged his way into acquiring her $100 million estate by exploiting her weaknesses. You wrote that Trump “was constantly calculating and assessing how to take maximum advantage of every situation.” I wonder if, while most people see the lame-duck period as a time to pack up and go, he sees it as a valuable opportunity to create discomfort that he can then trade for something valuable.
Of course he does. Life is a zero-sum game to Donald Trump. Every moment is a moment to dominate and win. Where some would see a lame-duck presidency, Trump views an opportunity to leverage power by granting pardons, raising money, and setting himself up for the future.

You also wrote, “If something didn’t work out for Trump to his satisfaction, he dropped the whole project instantaneously, or at least after he’d wallowed in his outrage and anger.” You don’t think this will apply to his political career?
I don’t think he views himself as being done with politics. It will be fascinating to follow his second act through the political wilderness of Mar-a-Lago, where he’ll undoubtedly try to rewrite history and claim his four years were a miracle of prosperity and success. He’s going to have this massive Twitter following and his own media network to keep himself relevant. If he stays out of prison, he will continue to be a dangerous force in GOP politics until the day he dies.

Do you think he will be criminally prosecuted, and if so, by whom and for what?
I believe he will be indicted, along with his sons, by Cy Vance as part of the widening probe into criminality and fraud at the Trump Organization. The bill is coming due, and it’s going to be nasty.

Will he try to pardon himself?
I believe he will do anything and everything to stay out of prison. It terrifies him. If he can find a way to pardon himself, he will do it.

As someone who knows him really well, is there something you see him doing in the next two months that will surprise everyone but you?
The only thing surprising he could do at this moment would be to go away and quietly lead his life with dignity and respect. Otherwise, we are stuck with this monster. Nothing he does surprises me anymore.

I think Cohen is right about Trump. I don’t know if he’s right about the system holding him responsible. I have a sneaking suspicion that Trump will die rich at the age of 95, babbling in his opulent bed along side his latest trophy wife.

The Bulwork’s Tim Miller watches Newsmax so you don’t have to. And it’s much, much worse than you think:

Since the glorious defeat of Donald Trump, I had been ensconced in my cozy coastal elite Twitter bubble, only privy to the bursts of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood crazy when it inserted itself in my feed. So when Ben Smith fed the blue check tigers this juicy morsel about the rise of Chris Ruddy and Newsmax, I was shook.

Newsmax’s prime-time ratings, which averaged 58,000 before Election Day, soared to 1.1 million afterward for its top shows.

Wait, seriously? A million people?

That’s a boost of 20x over the network’s pre-election ratings. To put it another way, Newsmax, which Nielsen only started tracking this past summer, went overnight from having programming that topped out at 1 percent the size of Fox’s biggest show (Tucker Carlson Tonight) to about 20 percent its size.

The demand side of the conservative media curve was speaking. They want Coup Theatre News and they want it now.

I wanted to find out what these folks were being told, so I committed myself to hours upon hours of viewing. You may think you have a sense for what is happening on The Max, but I promise you it is much weirder, more alarming, and more debased than you can imagine. Here’s some of what I saw:

The president’s campaign lawyer saying that a former Trump official should be executed.

A host saying that Biden’s election would bring a war between the races and that Barack Hussein Obama is a “reprobate” who is “pimping” a book.

Hosts and guests suggesting several times an hour that Republican state legislatures should overturn the will of the people to keep Trump in power.

Fantastical stories of millions of votes being dropped off by tow trucks in the dead of night after nationwide blackouts.

The term “ballot harvesting” bandied about indiscriminately.

An endless stream of Lionel Hutz-level legal analysis.

And that was just one day in the life of Uncut Kraken.PodcastJonathan V. Last on the Politics of Paranoia

The cast of characters who appear on Newsmax is so random that you might be tempted to describe it as a Political Star Wars Bar but that would be unfair to the Mos Eisley cantina. I saw Dinesh D’Souza. Dick Morris’s shiny dentures. The Gorka. Random kids from Twitter. Rudy, Rudy, and more Rudy. Blago. John Gizzi. Lots of blonde ladies. Broadway Joe.

A few personal disclosures before we journey into this heart of darkness:

Chris Ruddy, who owns and runs Newsmax, is a South Florida spinner of yarns who bought me a few fancy lunches during the Jeb! campaign, when he thought I might have Sean Spicer’s job at the White House podium one day.

Sean Spicer was my boss at the RNC and has been to my home.

John Bachman had me on his show a time or three back in the day.

I would guess with a high level of confidence that all of these gentlemen know that Donald Trump lost. Spicer said as much on November 5 before Newsmax realized just how much juice they could get out of the scam. Ruddy openly told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner that he saw a business opportunity in providing wall-to-wall election fraud fanfic.

What these characters are doing is exploiting Trump Nation’s need to believe that their great, nectarine idol is unbreakable and that the only way he could “lose” is if people who they hate—the Deep State, Big Tech, Antifa, the media, black people—are conspiring against him.

So here is the dangerous story they are being told—minute by agonizing minute.

I urge you to click over and read the whole thing. It’s is mind-bogglingly surreal and outrageous, s if QAnon got its own network or the Heaven’s Gate cult had a media company. It’s both hilarious and terrifying at the same time, kind of like a Jordan Peele movie for Trumpers. You simply won’t believe it.

Miller concludes with this, which I enjoyed:

I can’t believe this, but I’m back on the pipe, lured in by Sean Spicer booking Matt Gaetz because honestly, whenever you get two superstars like this on channel 1072, you have have a chance to see some magic.

Gaetz has been brought on to float the next step in the Dumb & Dumber “So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance” Coup should the state legislature cucks not of the testicular fortitude to steal the election like Dinesh D’Souza commands: the idea that Congress might decide not to certify the Electoral College result when they gavel into session in January.

“Just today, Gaetz says, “I’ve talked to Republicans in the House and Senate and there is an interest in looking into these irregularities to force a debate in Congress about whether to certify these states’ electors.”

Which Republicans did he talk to? That’s close-hold information, obviously. But this last ditch effort to keep the Orange God King in power is a real possibility. Trust Matt on this.

He then floats the idea that some “trucks that have gone missing with ballots and then may have appeared in Pennsylvania.”

This could be the lead that breaks the case wide open!

Spicer then brings up the myth that Pennsylvania stopped counting votes on election night at 9:00 p.m. and unveils this chart—which President Trump would show during his wheels-off Facetime speech the next day:

What could possibly explain that line, Spicer asks?

I don’t know, Sean, maybe Milwaukee releasing its vote count at the end of the night just like they do every freaking election year.

Which you would know.

BECAUSE WE WORKED FOR A WISCONSIN REPUBLICAN TOGETHER YOU HACK.

Sorry. It’s been a long 24 hours. That wasn’t me. That was The Max talking.

Anyway, this prompts Gaetz to fire off three minutes of election fraud gibberish: Ballot laundering scheme! “Urban core!” Ballots “willed into existence.” “Bad ballots” were “commingled with ballots that were lawfully cast.” There is a pool of “polluted ballots.”

Having done his duty, Gaetz departs and Spicer brings on Jordan Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team and the son of longtime Republican lawyer Jay Sekulow, who was one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers.

Sekulow fils says he thinks there’s a “very good chance the outcome changes” thanks to their case that would disenfranchise  every single person who voted absentee in the state of Wisconsin because something something signature matching.

“Very good” is doing a lot of work there, obviously, but I couldn’t help but thinking that a person could make a lot of money betting with these people.

That’s a thing, by the way. One of the footnotes to this election is that betting markets continued to take action on the outcome of the election even after the polls closed and there was an entire universe of suckers out there betting that Trump would win even days after the election.

When I saw those betting lines unfolding in real time, I couldn’t understand them. How could someone watching the election returns think that it was smart to bet cash-money on Trump, even as he lost state after state.

And how could tens of thousands of Americans be pilfered to the tune of $170 million dollars to fight an election that was already over?

But my time with The Max has given me a pretty clear explanation.

There’s a sucker born every minute. Maybe even a couple million of them.

That’s Newsmax’s business model. And it’s working out pretty well for them.

From Ed Scarce at Crooks and Liars:

The Canadian province of Manitoba has some of the harshest measures anywhere in North America to deal with COVID-19. Not wearing a mask? Fines of $1000 aren’t uncommon. Large house party? Fines of $100,000. Opening a non-essential business in a time of lockdown? Expect a visit from the police immediately. And so on.

So when their Premier (equivalent to a Governor) instituted even harsher measures before the holiday season he wanted to make sure that Manitobans took what he said seriously, even if they didn’t like it.

Source: CTV News

WINNIPEG — Premier Brian Pallister has a strong message for Manitobans disrespecting public health orders and is telling people to celebrate the holidays differently this year.

“If you don’t think that COVID is real right now, you’re an idiot,” the premier said during a news conference Thursday morning.

The premier provided an update on the provincial government’s response at a news conference Thursday during which he advised Manitobans to change their Christmas and holiday celebrations to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“I’m the guy who’s stealing Christmas to keep you safe because you need to do this now,” he said.

Pallister said he hoped Manitobans would respect him in the coming years for “having the guts” to tell them to do the right thing even if they aren’t happy with him now.

The premier said Manitobans will have much to celebrate next year, but for the time being, the right thing to do is to protect each other and stay safe by social distancing, wearing masks, and socializing only with people in their household.

U.S. reported 2,804 COVID-related deaths on Wednesday alone and another 2,879 on Thursday.

*Total deaths* since the start of COVID pandemic:
Greece: 2,706 (pop: 10M)
Japan: 2,208 (pop: 126M)
Nigeria: 1,179 (pop: 196M)
Australia: 908 (pop: 25M)
South Korea: 536 (pop: 51M)

— The Recount (@therecount) December 4, 2020

The most shocking number there is Japan. 126 million people and 2,208 deaths.

The US has 328 million and 277,000 deaths and counting.

This is a stunning failure from what we used to think of as the most advanced country in the world. Outrageous. Horrifying.

It’s more than a little disturbing that Trump is able to tap into a cadre of full-blown nuts who are associated with the military. Take a look at this one:

President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a senior Pentagon official spread debunked conspiracies on Twitter that called Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden a “coup” attempt and shared tweets that suggest Trump should declare martial law.Scott O’Grady, a former fighter pilot and Trump loyalist, repeatedly retweeted tweets that falsely stated Trump won the election in “landslide fashion” and that millions of votes were stolen from the President.

On November 25, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that said, “Trump won & Biden & his Comrades will now attempt a coup,” next to a photoshopped image of Biden beside Xi Jinping, the President of China.

On December 2, he retweeted an account that shared an article that said former national security adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.”I don’t know who needs to hear this,” the account said, “But calling for martial law is not a bad idea when there is an attempted coup against the president and this country happening right now.”

The tweet references a petition Flynn shared on Twitter calling for Trump to declare martial law and order a new presidential election. The petition falsely called November’s presidential election “fraudulent” and called on Trump to have the military oversee a new election. Attorney General William Barr said in an interview published Tuesday that there is no evidence that widespread fraud occurred during the election.close dialog

In the aftermath of the election, Trump himself has spread numerous conspiracies and falsehoods alleging that Democrats and other outside forces have stolen the election from him. He has also upended management in the Defense Department by making wholesale changes in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership since firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet November 9, ousting at least three other officials and replacing them with perceived loyalists.

CNN’s KFile reviewed O’Grady’s tweets and media appearances and found that O’Grady shared other debunked election conspiracies and that he also degraded top military and intelligence officials. In a radio interview, he called former President Barack Obama and military generals “sworn socialists,” and advocated that the military justice system should bring back treason charges. He retweeted a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis a “traitor.”

He tweeted that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a star witness during the Trump impeachment hearings, should be charged “for insurrection because he is a biased liberal political operative” and said on a radio show that it was “disgusting” for Vindman to testify against Trump. He also spread a baseless claim that the whistleblower in the impeachment saga dated the daughter of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.

O’Grady was nominated by the White House to become an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon, a key position within the Department of Defense’s policy shop overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The position is a political appointment, and if O’Grady is confirmed, he would only fill the role until the start of the Biden administration.

His nomination, which was sent to the Senate on Monday, comes as the Pentagon’s top civilian officials have been hastily replaced with perceived Trump loyalists and conspiracy theorists despite some lacking credentials — and in some cases, lacking Senate confirmation — for the positions.

CNN has reached out to O’Grady and the Defense Department for comment but has received no response. CNN has also reached out to Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee for comment, but received no response.

In the aftermath of this year’s presidential election, O’Grady has taken to retweeting dozens of conspiracies and falsehoods about the results, all of which allege that Trump won the election or that the election results were tampered with or covered up.

On November 19, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that falsely claimed Hillary Clinton and George Soros were involved in allowing foreign interference in the presidential election.On November 23, O’Grady retweeted a user who falsely claimed, “They stopped counting votes when @realDonaldTrump was winning “in landslide fashion.”On November 25, O’Grady retweeted a baseless accusation that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger–the governor, and secretary of state, of Georgia, respectively—may be covering up information about election results in Georgia.”

Brian & Brad seem to have something to hide,” the tweet said. “We need to find out what it is. I suspect they are hiding the TRUTH.”Trump lost Georgia to President-elect Biden by more than 12,000 votes. Though Georgia implemented an automatic recount, state officials say they have seen “no substantial change” in the results.On November 27, O’Grady retweeted the false claim that Trump won California, despite the fact that Trump lost the state by more than 5 million votes.

O’Grady has also signaled support for attorney Sidney Powell after the Trump campaign severed ties with her after she expressed beliefs that a network of communists, CIA agents, Democrats, Republicans, and Hugo Chavez, the dead former president of Venezuela, worked with Dominion Voting Systems to steal the election from Trump.

O’Grady has also shared or interacted with other online conspiracies not related to the election.On November 25, he retweeted a tweet that asked if the Covid-19 virus was partisan since it seemed to be disproportionately impacting Republican politicians over Democrats.In February 2020, O’Grady retweeted a tweet with a pro-QAnon hashtag. The far-right conspiracy theory claims that a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democratic politicians and celebrities abuse children and are working toward overthrowing Trump.

Why in the world would the Senate allow someone like this to be confirmed to anything? He belongs in a padded room.

Over the past few years both the media and Democratic officials have often reported that certain Republicans say on background or in private that they really can’t stand Donald Trump. Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein even named some names a few days ago. Some people in the media and political classes would apparently prefer that the public see the Republican establishment as terrified of Donald Trump’s base rather as than the cynics they are, eagerly taking advantage of Trump’s chaos to advance their agenda.

Trump’s post-election flights of lunacy provide an excellent case in point. While “mainstream” Republicans covertly whisper in Joe Biden’s ear that they know he won the election, and assure him that they find Trump’s twaddle about “rigged” votes and what have you terribly uncouth, they remain quiet in public, ostensibly because they want to let Trump have his tantrum and run out the clock, at which point we will pretend that all this unpleasantness never happened. This is, of course, nuts. President-elect Biden and every other Democrat who goes before the cameras to reassure Americans that the Republicans understand that Trump is off his rocker and that as soon as he’s gone we’ll all get back to normal are enabling them to continue the sabotage of our democracy. Democrats have no obligation to cover for Trump’s accomplices and they need to stop doing it.

Republicans have been wringing their hands about “voter fraud” for years — despite no evidence to support such claims — in order to make voting more difficult, which is of course their ultimate goal. It’s not as if Donald Trump came up with all this on his own. It’s been a GOP staple for decades. He’s just turned the dial up to 11, as he does with everything.

It’s not hard to imagine that the more flamboyant Republicans who are egging Trump on, as well as the quiet ones who are content to let this play out, see an opportunity to leverage Trump’s following to enact some truly egregious vote suppression tactics in swing states they know are not going their way. With 50 million angry Trump voters out there who at least claim to be convinced that the entire system is corrupt, who knows what they may be able to accomplish?

Republicans are counting on Trump fading away quickly while they continue to take advantage of the system he has broken. It’s a risky play. The conspiracy theories have become so byzantine and surreal that it won’t be easy to appease the mob, not even with extreme measures like outlawing early voting or voting by mail. Trump’s followers are being whipped into a frenzy, and it’s starting to blow back on the GOP.

Earlier this week Trump stood behind the presidential podium in the diplomatic reception room of the White House and delivered what he called “the most important speech” he’ll ever give. You might have assumed a speech described in those terms would have been about the massive death toll the country is currently experiencing from the pandemic. But no. As the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker put it, it was a prepared teleprompter speech in which “Trump tried to leverage the power of the presidency to subvert the vote and overturn the election results.”

Oddly, perhaps, Trump didn’t invite the press or an audience of any kind. (The number of cuts suggest the speech was delivered in several takes and then edited together.) Instead, the speech was streamed on Facebook and later broadcast in full on the right-wing cable networks. This was by design, obviously, in order to inject this diatribe directly into the Trumpist bloodstream, unadulterated by any commentary or fact checks. To my ears and those of anyone else who is living in reality, it sounded completely insane. To his followers, it was a formal presidential address.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell once said, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” I’m sure he will dedicate himself to the same task with respect to Joe Biden’s incoming administration, if McConnell can hold on to power. I’m also sure he wishes Trump would shut his trap about the supposedly rigged votes in Georgia, but there’s just no way to keep him quiet about this. And the longer Trump keeps his up, the more it’s twisting the Republican Party in knots. Every day he’s tweeting something like this:

Wow! Blockbuster testimony taking place right now in Georgia. Ballot stuffing by Dems when Republicans were forced to leave the large counting room. Plenty more coming, but this alone leads to an easy win of the State!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2020

People in Georgia got caught cold bringing in massive numbers of ballots and putting them in “voting” machines. Great job @BrianKempGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2020

The two screwball pro-Trump attorneys filing incompetent lawsuits on his behalf all over the country, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, as well as the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani (who is also filing incompetent lawsuits all over the country), are holding rallies and testifying in various venues to make ridiculous demands. Powell and Wood held a rally on Wednesday in which they excoriated Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for failing to call a special session of the state legislature to overturn the election results (inspiring “Lock him up ” chants from the crowd) and exhorted voters not to vote for Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Georgia Senate runoffs unless those two get with the program.

Giuliani was in Atlanta on Thursday, making his own plea for state legislators to overturn the election and select their own electors. His “evidence” had already been investigated and his understanding of Georgia law was incorrect, of course.

Republicans are reportedly very nervous about Trump’s planned super-spreader rally in Georgia on Saturday because he’s likely to dwell on the “rigged election” instead of focusing on getting out the vote for Loeffler and Perdue. It will be a huge surprise if Trump doesn’t just let his freak flag fly. It’s his first rally since the election and he’s hardly been seen on TV at all. He’s dying for an audience. It’s the air he breathes.

So it’s left to others to fight this “Stop the Steal” movement. A Breitbart report exposed Lin Wood as someone who voted for Democrats in the past and Newt Gingrich, who’s been fanning the conspiracy flames like crazy, calling the Georgia election a “left-wing power grab financed by people like George Soros,” abruptly reversed course and accused Powell and Wood of being “totally destructive.” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas jumped in, calling Wood a “clown” who is trying to “mislead voters.” Even the Trump War Room got in on the act.

Wood hasn’t backed down, telling the Daily Beast:

[T]he Trump campaign needs to demand that Governor Brian Kemp call a special session of [the] Georgia legislature. … Loeffler and Perdue should make that same demand. The general election was a fraud. After [the] legislature fixes the voting process, then get out and vote. Seems like good old common sense to me.

Look who sounds like he’s on the same page:

People in Georgia got caught cold bringing in massive numbers of ballots and putting them in “voting” machines. Great job @BrianKempGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2020

And here we have Michelle Malkin of Newsmax, a formerly fringe network whose ratings are going through the roof as the MAGA crowd emigrates from the deep-state propaganda of Fox News:

Dan Crenshaw is a globalist John McCain in an eyepatch who loves to party hardy while our country burns. PROTECT OUR ELECTION SYSTEM & OUR COUNTRY, NOT THE GOP SWAMP! https://t.co/bWw2SSmccX

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) December 4, 2020

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. It appears that the cult has a life of its own now and is in the process of disengaging from the Republican mothership. Whether this will affect the Georgia runoff remains to be seen. But it’s pretty clear that this “rigged election” gambit may have some far-reaching effects that the Republican establishment did not anticipate when they sat back and smugly let Donald Trump run wild with his conspiracy theories. 

My Salon column