Participants in the boogaloo movement often wear Hawaiian shirts along with military fatigues to identify themselves at protests such as this VCDL Lobby Day gun rights demonstration on January 20, 2020 in Richmond, Virginia. Photo by Anthony Crider via Wkimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
An FBI bulletin warned of far-right protests in the capitols of all 50 states beginning as soon as Sunday. Authorities beefed up security with state police and National Guard through Inuaguration Day. USA Today tracks what took place (or didn’t) in each capitol.
The few places where armed protesters appeared on Sunday, numbers were small — a few dozen Boogaloo “Bois” in Ohio and Michigan. They stood with their guns outside fortified statehouses trying to look menacing.
Of course, they seemed poseurs until enough far-right extremists arrived in numbers on Jan. 6 to sack the U.S. Capitol using whatever instruments of destruction they could get their hands on.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told CNN, “The plots of tomorrow are literally being hatched right now.” Experts on right-wing extremism believe the potential for violence will extend long beyond Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20:
Segal calls the Capitol attack a seminal moment and says it will have a major impact, even more than the country’s historically biggest catalysts for major anti-government activity.”
It ain’t Waco, it’s not Ruby Ridge, this is bigger than that,” Segal explains comparing January 6 to past events that sparked calls to action and inspired deeper distrust and sometimes hatred against the government. “This stuff impacts more people.”
Much of the widespread animosity driving armed protests is driven by fear of change, and by white Americans’ perceived loss of power and status to a growing, diverse population. A “widespread fear and anxiety over a perceived threat to society and order,” more so than mere economic anxieties, has fed a string of moral panics in U.S. over the last half century (from “satanic ritual abuse” to QAnon).
Such conspiratorial beliefs appear absurd from the outside. But their grip was powerful enough this month for thousands of true believers in a stolen election and a “deep state” run by a cabal of cannibal pedophiles to threaten the overthrow of the U.S. government. Jan. 6 rioters included current and former members of the military and law enforcement.
Conspiracists’ numbers were sufficient last November to elect two members of Congress who openly subscribe to the baseless QAnon conspiracy. One should anticipate they will work from the inside to undermine the very government they joined.
Thus, federal officials are vetting service members assigned to provide Capitol security for the inauguration ceremony on Wednesday:
U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.
The massive undertaking reflects the extraordinary security concerns that have gripped Washington following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. And it underscores fears that some of the very people assigned to protect the city over the next several days could present a threat to the incoming president and other VIPs in attendance.
In the past, such concerns focused on “homegrown insurgents radicalized by al-Qaida, the Islamic State group or similar groups.” Now the worry is “supporters of President Donald Trump, far-right militants, white supremacists and other radical groups” who believe the election was stolen from Trump.
Voltaire’s admonition is still applicable: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
The fallout from Trump’s assault on democracy is obviously at the top of our concerns as he is metaphorically dragged kicking and screaming from the White House but let’s not forget about the rampant corruption during his term.
CREW put together some nice graphics illustrating what we know about. (There is likely a whole lot we don’t…)
To think Republicans had the nerve to push bogus corruption scandals around “the appearance of conflict” when wealthy people gave money to Clinton’s global charity even as they cheered on this criminal in the White House pocketing every dime he could steal.
I don’t know if there will ever be an accounting for his corruption. Probably not. And it’s hard to imagine anyone quite this crudely corrupt seizing power any time soon. (They’ll be more discreet in the future.) But I do know that it will serve to tie Democrats in knots because Republicans will gleefully and smugly hold Democrats to a previously unarticulated standard, and calling them hypocrites if they try to explain that. Allies will attack them as well, making it clear that they should always foresee changing standards and hold themselves to them in advance. Republicans will benefit from Trump’s corruption and Democrats will pay the price.
On the other hand, having one party that is held to ethical standards is better than none.
An associate of Rudy Giuliani told a former CIA officer a presidential pardon was “going to cost $2m”, the New York Times reported on Sunday in the latest bombshell to break across the last, chaotic days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The report detailed widespread and in some cases lucrative lobbying involving people seeking a pardon as Trump’s time in office winds down. The 45th president, impeached twice, will leave power on Wednesday with the inauguration of Joe Biden.
The former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who was jailed in 2012 for leaking the identity of an operative involved in torture, told the Times he laughed at the remark from the associate of Giuliani, the former New York mayor who as Trump’s personal attorney is reportedly a possible pardon recipient himself.
“Two million bucks – are you out of your mind?” Kiriakou reportedly said. “Even if I had two million bucks, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension.”
An associate of Kiriakou reported the conversation to the FBI, the Times said.
This is legal, apparently. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t corrupt.
Here’s the second installment of Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the final days:
President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.
In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.
Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin.
“You have a 5% to 10% chance of this happening,” Clark told the president. “But all of these things have to go right.” Trump listened calmly and told them their plan was worth a shot.
But it would never get off the ground. Plan B, driven by Rudy Giuliani and a parallel track of conspiracists, was already coming together, unfolding before the original advisers’ own eyes.
It would soon overtake the campaign’s legal operation, feeding the president false claims including the idea that the election could be overturned.
On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges.
Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally.
These two groups — the professional staff and the Giuliani cabal — filled in around one long, rectangular table in a conference room walled in by frosted glass. The pattern repeated itself the day after that and the day after that.
A bizarre routine set in. These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating “deep state” conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell’s view, international communists — to steal the election.
Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien’s office, about 20 yards down the hall.
Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He’d walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien’s office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. “You guys, where did you go?” Giuliani would say. “This is serious!”
Asked to provide comment on this reporting, which was confirmed by two sources in the room, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: “Your story is materially false, but I’m sure the ‘elitist and consultant class’ that make millions of dollars lying to the American people are behind it and will push that propaganda.” Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.
Officials including Clark, Morgan and Bossie, who played a key role in Trump’s 2016 victory, spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign’s legal approach. But they were outmatched, and Trump was tweeting his own spiraling conspiracies.
The numbers in Pennsylvania and Georgia kept getting worse. Top officials knew the election was getting away from them. Even the Giuliani-free meetings were overcome with paralysis.
The White House became a strange ghost town in the days after the election. Trump’s schedule — already unstructured — became more so. It was impossible to shift his focus from his grievances about the election to important policy matters. In conversations in the Oval Office, Trump would occasionally slip and seem to acknowledge he lost, saying, “Can you believe I lost to that fucking guy? That fucking corpse?”
Most in the West Wing, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, understood that Trump had lost. But nobody confronted him directly with that unpleasant news. Instead many on the staff chose to avoid him.
Some of the senior staff argued that Trump should spend this post-election period claiming credit for the GOP’s strong congressional performances in the elections and to burnish his legacy, by talking about his achievements in office and the pace of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development. But Trump wouldn’t allow his team to move on. To be around him meant you had to accommodate some measure of denial.
Senior White House staff and health officials maintained a standing 9 a.m. “COVID huddle” in the Roosevelt Room. They talked through the vaccine rollout, which would continue into 2021. Left unsaid was that they had lost the election and wouldn’t be around to see it fully through. Aides could only discuss the reality of Trump’s loss in more private settings.
Trump’s closest aides said they wanted to give him space to experience all the stages of grief. But he rarely made it past the denial stage. And many of his aides made themselves scarce, worried that if they found themselves in the Oval Office they could be sucked into conversations that could force them to incur hefty legal bills down the track.
Trump’s most devoted aides did whatever they could to buck up his spirits, even if it meant indulging his delusions. Sometimes it was hard to tell if they were humoring Trump or had tipped over into fantastical thinking themselves. In late November, the head of the Presidential Personnel Office, Trump’s former body man John McEntee, told colleagues they ought to get together to discuss second-term priorities. Not many were enthusiastic.
Biden was declared the winner of Arizona on Nov. 12, by more than 11,000 votes, a margin that was uncatchable. At that point, the core campaign team told Trump his pathway was dead. In retaliation, Trump stopped listening to them. Giuliani was gaining influence, speaking directly with the president and demanding to be put in charge.
On Nov. 13, Clark was in the Cabinet room of the White House with Stepien, Miller and campaign aide Erin Perrine for a meeting on communications strategy when deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino summoned Clark into the Oval Office to settle a legal question.
Trump had Giuliani on speakerphone, and Giuliani, seemingly unaware of Clark’s arrival, was trashing the campaign staff’s legal strategy in Georgia — and floating a debunked conspiracy theory about rigged Dominion voting machines.
“Hey, I’ve got Justin in here,” Trump interrupted. “What do you think, Justin?” Clark laid out the legal process in Georgia and told the packed Oval Office that Georgia state law barred requesting a recount until after an election is certified.
“They’re lying to you, sir!” Giuliani erupted.
“We’re not lying,” Clark shot back. “You’re a fucking asshole, Rudy.”
The following night — without notifying his campaign staff — Trump tweeted that he was putting Giuliani in charge of his legal challenges, along with pro-Trump lawyers Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Jenna Ellis.
Republican National Committee officials were not happy about this. They rejected a request to fund TV commercials claiming the election was “stolen.” But they greenlit a press conference on Nov. 19, a debut for the new legal team.
It played like a B movie. Black sweat, apparently from hair dye, rolled down Giuliani’s face as he rambled about a supposed Democratic conspiracy to rig the vote in major cities. Powell, once a respected federal prosecutor, alleged an international communist plot by Cuba, China, Venezuela, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation.
Senior party officials were mortified but felt helpless. This was the Giuliani show now. The barbarians were in the Oval. The rest of the Republican Party was just along for the ride.
The RNC re-elected trump sycophant Ronna McDaniel. And when Trump called in to their winter meeting they all chanted “we love you.” He still has a powerful hold on these people. They just can’t quit him.
Departing presidents usually get a little bump at the end of their terms, even when they’ve been defeated for reelection. Even Nixon, who was actually much lower than Trump is now, (showing the difference between yesterday’s GOP and today’s) leveled off in his final days.
This story in the New York Times about a QAnon true believer shows that this is not really a political problem. It’s a societal and cultural problem that’s exploded through the internet. It’s a form of mass hysteria and it’s very creepy.
Every morning, Valerie Gilbert, a Harvard-educated writer and actress, wakes up in her Upper East Side apartment; feeds her dog, Milo, and her cats, Marlena and Celeste; brews a cup of coffee; and sits down at her oval dining room table.
Then, she opens her laptop and begins fighting the global cabal.
Ms. Gilbert, 57, is a believer in QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory. Like all QAnon faithful, she is convinced that the world is run by a Satanic group of pedophiles that includes top Democrats and Hollywood elites, and that President Trump has spent years leading a top-secret mission to bring these evildoers to justice.
She unspools this web of falsehoods on her Facebook page, where she posts dozens of times a day, often sharing links from right-wing sites like Breitbart and The Epoch Times or QAnon memes she has pulled off Twitter. On a recent day, her feed included a rant against Covid-19 lockdowns, a grainy meme accusing Congress of “high treason,” a post calling Lady Gaga a Satanist and a claim that “covfefe,” a typo that Mr. Trump accidentally tweeted three years ago, was a coded intelligence message.
“I’m the meme queen,” Ms. Gilbert told me. “I won’t produce them, but I share a mean meme, and I’m kind of raw.”
These are confusing times for followers of QAnon, a deranged conspiracy theory birthed in the bowels of the internet. They were told that Mr. Trump would be re-elected in a landslide, and that a coming “storm” would expose the global pedophile ring and bring its leaders to justice.
But there have been no mass arrests, and Mr. Trump is leaving office on Wednesday under the cloud of a second impeachment. Many prominent QAnon followers have been arrested for their roles in this month’s deadly mob riot at the U.S. Capitol. They are being barred by the thousands from major social networks for spreading misinformation about voter fraud, and law enforcement agencies are treating the movement as a domestic extremist threat.
These setbacks have left QAnon believers like Ms. Gilbert hoping for a last-minute miracle. Her current theory is that Mr. Trump will not actually leave office on Wednesday, but will instead declare martial law, declassify damning information about the “deep state” and arrest thousands of cabal members, including President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Like any movement its size — which is almost certainly in the millions, though it is impossible to quantify — QAnon contains a wide range of beliefs and tactics. Some “anons” are veteran conspiracists who have spent years exploring the theory’s many tributaries. Others are newer converts who have only a vague idea how it all connects. There are law-abiding keyboard warriors as well as violent, unhinged radicals.
There is no question that QAnon, which began in 2017 with a series of anonymous posts on the 4chan online message board by “Q,” a person purporting to be a high-ranking government insider, has outgrown its roots on the far-right fringes. It is now a big-tent conspiracy theory community that includes left-wing yoga moms, anti-lockdown libertarians and “Stop the Steal” Trumpists. QAnon believers are young and old, male and female, educated and not. Every community in America has its fair share of them — dentists and firefighters and real estate agents who disappeared down a social media rabbit hole one day and never came back.
She gets kudos for being “the meme queen.” Not that she makes them. She’s known for sharing them. She’s obviously very proud of that. Which is just sad.
This dynamic reminds me of catfishing romances or people who get addicted to online porn — or maybe gambling addiction. And it seems like something most of us first witnessed a long time ago, in the early days of the internet. It’s a combination of delusional belief in something too good to be true and the dopamine rush of getting positive reinforcement at the push of a button. It does something to the brain. From everything I’ve read about this, for people who are isolated or take that solitary dive down the rabbit hole when they are alone, I guess it can be intoxicating. And it’s got to be devastating when the money runs out, the porn becomes exhausting or your true love is revealed to be a hoaxster. I guess some people just move on to another conspiracy or find some way to rationalize their way into a different obsession, but I think that for many, reality does bite in the end and they will be in a very fragile state. They give up their lives for this illusion and when it’s gone there’s nothing left.
This was much more terrifying than we originally thought. They came very, very close to being able to hurt lawmakers or hold them hostage. Considering what they did to cops, I have no doubt they would have done it.
When Luke Mogelson attended President Donald Trump’s speech on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, he was prepared for the possibility that violence might erupt that day. Mogelson, a veteran war correspondent and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, had spent the previous ten months reporting on the radical fringe of Trump supporters, from anti-lockdown militias to fascist groups such as the Proud Boys.
After Election Day, he interviewed Trump supporters who showed up at ballot-tabulation sites, and who believed the President’s lies that the results had been “rigged” and his victory “stolen.” At one post-election pro-Trump rally in D.C., Mogelson witnessed racist violence against Black residents of the nation’s capital. At another event, he watched the host of the white-supremacist Web program “America First” declare, “Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do.”
After Trump’s incendiary speech, Mogelson followed the President’s supporters as they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, using his phone’s camera as a reporter’s notebook. What follows is a video that includes some of that raw footage. Mogelson harnessed this material while writing his panoramic, definitive report, “Among the Insurrectionists,” which the magazine posted online on Friday. (It appears in print in the January 25th issue.) His prose vividly captures how the raging anger and violence of the initial breach of the Capitol was followed by an eerily quiet and surreal interlude inside the Senate chamber, where Mogelson watched people rummaging through desks and posing for photographs. Although the footage was not originally intended for publication, it documents a historic event and serves as a visceral complement to Mogelson’s probing, illuminating report.
Vloggers Walter Masterson and J.P. Scattini went undercover at the StopTheSteal rally to make what they thought was a comedy video, but it soon turned far darker and scarier in real time.
They put an OAN marker on their microphone, donned a Trump flag, Trump hats and flag masks, and started interviewing people. It didn’t take them long to realize they were on the edge of an angry, misinformed mob. By the time that mob had broken into the Capitol, they realized this was no ordinary rally, there wasn’t anything funny about it, and they needed to get the hell out of there.
On the way, people volunteered to give them their videos because they actually thought they were with OAN.
“They’ve been fed so much misinformation. These are people who are telling me that Fox is liberal propaganda,” Scattini says at the end.
“I had someone say to me, ‘You know it’s a sad day when Alex Jones is the most trusted voice in the room,'” he continued. “This is someone who recognized that Alex Jones is out of his mind, but still didn’t trust that he could believe anyone else to get real news from.”
Watch the whole video. It’s long, but it is, bar none, the best depiction of how the right has corrupted the minds of their own base.
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani tells ABC News he’s working as part of the president’s defense team in his upcoming second impeachment trial — and that he’s prepared to argue that the president’s claims of widespread voter fraud did not constitute incitement to violence because the widely-debunked claims are true.
A few hours later, Giuliani — who led the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — was spotted at the White House.
Giuliani’s involvement in Trump’s impeachment defense comes as many of the lawyers involved in the president’s first impeachment, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputies and outside lawyers Jay Sekulow and Jane and Marty Raskin, do not plan to return for the second trial.
Along with Trump, Giuliani spoke at the Jan. 6 rally ahead of the Capitol attack, where he urged the crowd to engage in “trial by combat.” Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died when pro-Trump supporters marched to the Capitol following the rally and forced their way into the building in an effort to keep members of Congress from certifying the presidential election for president-elect Joe Biden.MORE: Longtime Trump advisers connected to groups behind rally that led to Capitol attack
Giuliani said there are “different opinions” regarding how the president should approach his second impeachment.
The former New York City mayor said that in his defense of the president, he would introduce allegations of widespread voter fraud that have been raised — and rejected — in dozens of courtrooms across the country.
“They basically claimed that anytime [Trump] says voter fraud, voter fraud — or I do, or anybody else — we’re inciting to violence; that those words are fighting words because it’s totally untrue,” he said. “Well, if you can prove that it’s true, or at least true enough so it’s a legitimate viewpoint, then they are no longer fighting words.”
In a series of court cases following the election, Giuliani and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell alleged, unsuccessfully, that an array of forces from voting machine manufacturers to poll workers had plotted to steal the election from Trump despite Biden’s victory in the Electoral College as well as the popular vote.
Regarding impeachment, Giuliani also said that he personally believed Trump should move to dismiss the trial outright.
“If they decide to bring it to a trial, he should move to dismiss the impeachment as entirely illegal. That it was the only impeachment ever done in what, two days, three days,” Giuliani told ABC News. “We would say to the court, ‘You are now permitting in the future, basically in two days, the Congress can just impeach on anything they want to.”
In an historic move last week, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump, with all Democrats along with 10 Republican members voting to charge the president with inciting supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol.
“The president of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion, against our common country. He must go,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on the House floor. “He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in House leadership, was among the 10 Republicans who voted to charge the president. Cheney issued a scathing statement condemning the president’s actions ahead of the vote, writing, “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president.”
Giuliani dismissed the validity of the single article of impeachment accusing Trump of inciting violence against the government on the grounds that the president’s rally speech did not incite the riot because there was a delay between the speech and the attack.
“Basically, if [incitement] is going to happen, it’s got to happen right away,” he said. “You’d have to have people running out, you’d have to have people running out of that frozen speech, right up to the Capitol. And that’s basically, incitement,” Giuliani said.
If the effort to dismiss the impeachment article fails, which is likely, Giuliani said he wouldn’t rule out the president testifying. Trump’s lawyers were opposed to him testifying during his first impeachment trial, but Giuliani says this situation is different and the impeachment defense is “much more straightforward.”
“You always make that decision at the last minute,” Giuliani said. “As a lawyer, I wouldn’t be as strongly opposed to his testifying as I was then.”
Sources close to the president had recently told ABC News that Trump had been increasingly irritated with Giuliani and had not been taking his calls, but he now appears still very much involved in the discussions about how to handle the impeachment trial.
One of the big remaining questions about Trump’s final days in office is what pardons he may issue and if he will attempt to pardon himself, something Trump has told advisers he would like to do even though no president has ever done so. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has advised Trump against a self-pardon, in part because he does not think such a pardon would hold up in court, according to sources familiar with the conversations.MORE: Pelosi declines to say when she will send impeachment article to Senate
Giuliani declined to say what advice he has given the president about pardoning himself, but he told ABC News that his personal opinion is that it’s perfectly justified.
“I think any lawyer would have to tell you there’s nothing in the Constitution that permits it. There’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. The plain language of the Constitution doesn’t limit who we can pardon,” Giuliani said. “Do I think there’s justification for it because of the atmosphere we are in? Practical justification? Absolutely.”
Giuliani dismissed concerns of some Trump advisers that a self-pardon would make Trump more vulnerable to future civil lawsuits because it would be seen as an admission of guilt.
“I mean his legal life’s gonna be complicated no matter what,” Giuliani told ABC News. “Maybe because I’m more of a criminal lawyer than a civil lawyer, I’d much rather have my civil life complicated than my criminal life.”
Getting the bad taste of the Trump administration out of our collective mouths would have been a tall order for any Democrat. Whatever President-elect Joe Biden does upon taking office will draw criticism from the right for being too much and from the left for being too little. It comes with the territory.
Biden has a lot to clean up starting Day 1. He will start with a flurry of executive orders meant to undo the damage Trump did to the U.S. and its international image. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain issued a memo outlining Biden’s first-week agenda. Politico reports that after his swearing-in on Wednesday, “Biden will rescind the travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries, rejoin the Paris climate accords, extend limits on student loan payments and evictions instituted during the pandemicand issue a mask mandate on federal properties and for interstate travel.”
That is just the appetizer:
On Biden’s second day in office, he will sign executive actions focused on addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, including ways to help schools and business reopen safely, expand testing, protect workers and establish clearer public health standards. The next day, Biden will direct his Cabinet to work on delivering economic relief to families most affected by the crisis.
In subsequent days, Biden will expand “Buy America provisions,” take action to advance “equity and support communities of color,” begin to reform the criminal justice, expand access to healthcare and work toward reuniting families separated at the border. Klain did not specify what these actions would entail, but the memo follows Biden’s introduction this week of his legislative agenda, which includes a $1.9 trillion relief bill.
Biden plans a 10-day sprint not only of executive orders but legislative proposals including his $1.9 trillion stimulus and pandemic relief package.
Already that relief package has drawn criticism. “We will finish the job of getting a total of $2,000 in direct relief to people who need it the most,” Biden said in a speech Thursday evening. “The $600 already appropriated is simply not enough.”
Did that mean Congress should authorize an additional $1400 in stimulus checks for Americans on top of the $600 already approved, or should the checks be for an additional $2,000?
“$2,000 means $2,000. $2,000 does not mean $1,400,″ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said. Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush joined her in that demand.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) says Dems should pass $2K on top of the $600 from December, rather than add $1,400 to get $600 to $2K.
“The people deserve, demand and require $2,000 recurring monthly survival checks,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts wrote on Twitter.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat representing Massachusetts, reiterated support for legislation he helped write that would provide monthly $2,000 payments for people who make up to $120,000 during the pandemic.
“The new Congress needs to pass my legislation with [Sen. Bernie Sanders] to give people $2,000 every month,” Markey wrote on Twitter Friday.
Deficit hawks will be circling, naturally. Honestly, I thought the deal was $2,000 total. Maybe I was too busy fretting about violent insurrection to pay close attention. Those struggling to feed their families and at risk of being thrown out of their apartments probably listened more closely.
An irregular Twitter user from rural northern Wisconsin spotted several American flags flown upside down on Saturday, a distress signal.
The anxiety will not subside until the current occupant of the Oval Office leaves it. News hounds who keep refreshing wire service pages looking for news of new Trump/Proud Boy/Oath Keeper/boogaloo boys/neo-Nazi/QAnon attacks across the country know the feeling. What beside issuing pardons Donald J. Trump might do in his final hours as president adds to the sense that a Damoclean sword still hangs over the United States.
We are all a little on edge. With reason (Reuters):
Protesters are expected to descend on statehouses across the United States on Sunday in support of baseless claims that electoral fraud robbed President Donald Trump of a second term, as law enforcement officials girded for possible violence.
More than a dozen states have activated National Guard troops to help secure their capitol buildings following an FBI warning of armed protests, with right-wing extremists emboldened by the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.
There were scattered demonstrations on Saturday, but statehouses remained mostly quiet. Security officials have eyed Sunday as the first major flashpoint as that is when the anti-government “boogaloo” movement made plans weeks ago to hold rallies in all 50 states.
Downtown Washington, D.C. is filled with National Guard soldiers and the streets are virtually empty. Several states have secured their Capitols with fencing and barriers through Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 (Associated Press):
“The Texas Department of Public Safety is aware of armed protests planned at the Texas State Capitol this week and violent extremists who may seek to exploit constitutionally protected events to conduct criminal acts,” said Steve McCraw, the agency’s director.
More than 100 troopers in riot gear were stationed outside the Capitol in Austin earlier this week as lawmakers began a new legislative session.
Georgia state police and National Guard troops stand guard around the state Capitol on Atlanta. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) warns American Muslims and other minority groups to avoid state Capitols and to exercise caution “due to threat of far-right, White supremacist violence.”
Reports of an 11th-hour order by Christopher Miller, Donald Trump’s acting defense secretary, for the director of the National Security Agency to install a Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) ally as the agency’s general counsel raised eyebrows overnight (Washington Post):
In November, Pentagon General Counsel Paul C. Ney Jr. named Michael Ellis, then a White House official, to the position of general counsel at the NSA, a career civilian post at the government’s largest and most technologically advanced spy agency, The Post reported. He was selected after a competitive civil service competition. He has not taken up the job, however, as he needed to complete administrative procedures, including taking a polygraph test.
Reached by phone Saturday, Ellis said, “I don’t talk to the press, thank you,” and hung up.
Acting DOD Sec Miller wants to put someone who has been involved in potential criminal wrong-doing associated with Trump in one of the most sensitive positions in govt w/o passing a poly first. https://t.co/zIuBxUBHvO
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s tweet about Miller’s order drew anxious unrelated replies from followers:
Everyone be aware! My wife works in a retail store here in Michigan. Two separate groups of 4 men in matching gear (black bandana, confederate flag jackets, beards etc. from PA, MI, WI, and IL (she had to card them all) were buying beer and on their way to Lansing (State Capitol)
An irregular Twitter user in rural northern Wisconsin replied with a photo of an American flag flown upside down, a distress signal: “Central WI, 1.16.21. This is one if 4 like this I saw during a 2 hour trip.” (See top.) Other flags have been spotted flying upside down in central Florida in apparent reaction to Congress certifying the presidential election victory of former Vice president Joe Biden.
If all Trump fans do from here on is fly their flags upside down, while improper it is not illegal. Nor is it violent.
I’ll be doing a lot of refreshing on news sites today.
Herman J. Mankiewicz: Irving [Thalberg], you are a literate man. You know the difference between communism and socialism. In socialism, everyone shares the wealth. In communism, everyone shares the poverty. […]
Mankiewicz [In a later scene, referring to his dinner host William Randolph Hearst] …he’s EXACTLY what our Don used to be! An idealist, ya get it? And not only that, his nemesis [gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair] is the same guy who once predicted that our Quixote would one day preside over a socialist revolution. Our Quixote looks into the mirror of his youth and decides to break this glass, a maddening reminder of who he once was. [Pointing at fellow dinner guest Louis B. Mayer] Assisted by his faithful Sancho.
– from Mank, screenplay by Jack Fincher
Russ Brissenden: I’m warning you, Martin…don’t waste time. How many people do you see starve to death or go to jail because they are nothing else but wretches, stupid and ignorant slaves? Fight for them, Martin. Fight for socialism.
Martin Eden: You and I have nothing to do with socialists! Yet you insist on spending time with them!
Russ Brissenden: Socialism is inevitable. The slaves have now become too many. Anything is preferable to the pigs that govern now. Socialism will give a sense to your writing, Martin. It might be the only thing that will save you from the disappointment that’s approaching.
Martin Eden: What disappointment? [End scene]
– from Martin Eden, screenplay by Maurizio Brariucci & Pietro Marcello
It is tempting to suggest that, aside from the fact that David Fincher’s Mank and Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden are films about writers (the former a real-life figure and the latter a fictional character), they are also both “about” socialism. But they are not really, at least not in any didactic way. I will venture to suggest that they do merge in a tangential way, with a minor fender-bender at the intersection of Jack London and Upton Sinclair.
I came to this ‘epiphany’ in my usual bumbling fashion. Being a lazy bastard, I have been putting off writing a review of Mank (which has been available on Netflix since early December). This time of year, less screener links come my way than usual (even publicists need a holiday break, I suppose), so with nothing new to cover this week I went for the low-hanging fruit, planning to devote this post to Mank. Murphy’s Law being what it is, I was offered a crack at Martin Eden, a film I had already been intrigued to see.
Martin Eden is based on Jack London’s eponymous novel. I admit I have never read it, which may have worked in my favor, as I went into it with no expectations and an open mind. Good thing too, as I gather that some London purists are upset that the director and co-writer Maurizio Braucci transposed a tale originally set in early 1900s America to an unspecified (mid to latter?) 20th-Century period in Italy, chockablock with anachronisms.
When we are introduced to the strapping Martin (Luca Marinelli) he’s a drunken sailor pulling an all-night pub crawl, boning and grogging his way down the waterfront and sleeping it off al fresco. When he awakens, he espies a slightly built young man getting bullied by a goon and springs to his rescue. The grateful Arturo (Giustiniano Alpi) invites Martin to have breakfast with his family, who turn out to be well to-do. This is where Martin meets Arturo’s pretty sister Elena (Jessica Cressy) who will be the love of his life.
The directionless (and penniless) Martin is enthralled and fascinated not only by Elena’s loveliness, but her education and refinement. Intuiting that his uneducated proletarian upbringing puts him out of her league, he decides then and there to become a man of letters, come hell or high water. Initially, Elena’s interest does not lean toward amour, but she is not immune to Martin’s innate charm. She also senses his natural intelligence; so, she begins to tutor him, encouraging him to expand his intellect (not unlike My Fair Lady, except in this scenario…Elena is Professor Higgins, and Martin is Eliza Doolittle).
Martin begins to write in earnest. At a soiree hosted by Elena’s family, Martin recites one of his poems, to polite applause. One of the guests is Russ Brissenden, an older gentleman of mysterious means. The straight-talking Brissenden tells Martin his poem had substance and was not appreciated by the bourgeoisie guests. Brissenden, a Socialist and writer himself, becomes a mentor, encouraging Martin to write about what he knows.
Eventually Martin and Elena’s relationship does develop into full-blown romance. However, when Martin tells her that he has decided to pursue writing as a living, he is puzzled and hurt when she tells him that the subjects that he chooses to write about are too “raw” and “real” and do not offer enough “hope” to people. She implies that if he does not find a trade to fall back on, she is afraid they will never be able to get married.
Martin goes to Brissenden for counseling. When Brissenden tells him that he needs to forget about pleasing Elena (bluntly referring to her as an “idiot”) and reset his priorities to focus solely on finding his voice as a writer, Martin sees red and physically attacks Brissenden. He immediately apologizes, as he now sees that Elena’s harsh appraisal of his work was not constructive criticism, so much as it was her outing herself as a classist.
In a narrative jump 2/3 of the way through, Martin has not only found his voice as a writer, essayist, and poet, but fame and fortune as such. He is also cynical, apolitical, and indifferent to success. He’s given most of his money away; mostly to those who helped him when he was struggling. At a public event, he sneeringly refers to himself as a “hoodlum and a sailor” to adoring fans. We get a sketch of Martin’s wilderness years between his breakup with Elena and achieving world acclaim, but with no explanation given for his apparent descent into a chronic state of existential malaise and self-loathing.
For the final third of the film, Martin tap-dances willy-nilly around the edges of the time-space continuum like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. In one scene, he watches a group of Fascist black shirts enjoying recreation at the beach. There are references to an imminent “war” involving Italy during what appears to be the late 70s…but then we see a vintage newsreel of a Nazi book burning in the 1930s. It is artfully constructed, which I suppose injects lyricism into Marcello’s film, but it somehow feels like window dressing.
Then again, if I may jump ahead and steal a line from Mank: “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours; all you can hope is to leave an impression of one.” On the plus side, despite its overreaching themes Martin Eden is a pleasing throwback to class struggle dramas from the 60s and 70s like Visconti’s The Leopard and Bertolucci’s 1900.
Regarding Upton Sinclair. He and Jack London were not only contemporaries, but mutual admirers of each other’s writings. Before he wrote The Jungle, the 1906 novel that put him on the map, Sinclair (who had over 90 books to his credit by his death in 1968 at the age of 90) is said to have been greatly influenced by People of the Abyss, London’s 1903 book about the slums of London’s East End. And here’s what London said of The Jungle:
“Dear Comrades: . . . The book we have been waiting for these many years! It will open countless ears that have been deaf to Socialism. It will make thousands of converts to our cause. It depicts what our country really is, the home of oppression and injustice, a nightmare of misery, an inferno of suffering, a human hell, a jungle of wild beasts.”
That sounds awfully close to the kind of book that the (fictional) Socialist Russ Brissenden would love to see his (fictional) protégé Martin Eden write. Not a stretch, considering London was a Socialist. In fact, he and Sinclair were charter members of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Founded in 1905, the I.S.S. had a stated purpose to “throw light on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism.”
But what’s most interesting about Martin Eden (commonly assumed to be a semi-autobiographical work), is that its protagonist rejects Socialism outright. According to Wiki, in the copy of the novel which he inscribed for Upton Sinclair, London wrote, “One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled it, for not a single reviewer has discovered it.” And so it goes.
For a guy who has been dead for 53 years, Upton Sinclair sure gets around a lot these days. Admittedly he has but a spectral “presence” in the margins of Martin Eden (as I explained above) but he gets a cameo and maybe a quarter-page of dialog in David Fincher’s Mank. Well, “he” as in a reasonable facsimile, in the person of Bill Nye the Science Guy. Nye portrays Sinclair delivering a speech in his iteration as a politician, when he ran for Governor of California in 1934 (he ran as a Democrat and lost the race).
However, the focus of David Fincher’s Mank is Herman J. Mankiewicz – Hollywood screenwriter, inveterate gambler, world-class inebriate, and born tummler. More specifically, it is a (more-or-less accurate) chronicle of the part he played in the creation of Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane. Which reminds me of a funny story.
Back in 2007, I published a review of a film wherein I innocuously referenced to The Princess Bride as “Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride.” At the time, Hullabaloo readers were able to comment on posts. Man, did I ever release the Kraken with that one. To say that I was beset upon is understatement. “ROB REINER’S The Princess Bride?! Ingrate! Philistine! Aren’t you aware that William Goldman wrote the screenplay?!” Yes, I was.
This sparked a lively discussion on “whose” film it was. Call me madcap, but I’m sure I’ve read and heard the phrase “Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause” many more times than the phrase “Stewart Stern’s Rebel Without a Cause” (as in never!). Of course I realize there’s no film without a screenwriter. And I’m also aware there are films written and directed by the same person. I just never got the memo about these shorthand “rules”.
So is it “Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane”? Or is it “Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Citizen Kane”?
In his ambitious attempt to answer that million-dollar question in just over two hours, Fincher, armed with a sharp and literate screenplay by his late father Jack Fincher (who passed away in 2003; I’d hazard that this project was in development for a spell) has layered his biopic with enough Hollywood meta to make even Quentin Tarantino plotz.
The story opens in 1940, by which time Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) has burned his bridges in Tinseltown, thanks to his sharp tongue and love of the bottle. Despite this (or perhaps he is attracted by Mank’s budget-friendly mix of writing prowess and financial desperation), Welles (Tom Burke) recruits him to write a screenplay for his first film. Welles, with a commanding and formidable presence that belied his 24 years, was a hard man to say “no” to. He had already made a splash in radio and theater and had just signed an unprecedented contract with RKO which gave him full creative control of his projects.
Mank is convalescing from an auto accident that has left him bedridden with a broken leg. Welles has set him up at an isolated ranch house in Victorville, California, where Mank dictates his screenplay to his British secretary (Lily Collins). In a slightly cruel but pragmatic move, Wells has also provided Mank with a cabinet full of liquor (surreptitiously laced with Seconal) at the foot of the bed…out of reach. This dangles a carrot for motivation to heal up and focus on writing, but also (sort of) guarantees rationing.
Welles enlists his producer John Houseman (Sam Troughton) to make house calls to keep tabs on Mank’s progress with the script (which eventually tops 300 pages, much to Houseman’s chagrin). As Mank toils on his tome, flashbacks to the 1930s are cleverly interwoven to tell both the story of Mank’s mercurial career in the Hollywood studio system, as well as illustrate how his equally mercurial acquaintanceship with newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and Hearst’s lover, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) provided the grist for creating the characters in Citizen Kane. (in the event Citizen Kane remains unchecked on your bucket list, that would be the one where “Charles Foster Kane” unquestionably rhymes with “William Randolph Hearst”).
Film buffs who have given Citizen Kane a spin will enjoy playing “spot the visual quote”, as Fincher has festooned them throughout (nice B&W photography by Erik Messerschmidt adds to the verisimilitude). The elder Fincher’s script gives the characters much to chew on, particularly Oldman, who merrily fires off Mank’s droll barbs with deadly accuracy. Fine work by a large cast that includes Ferdinand Kingsley (as Irving Thalberg), Arless Howard (as Louis B. Mayer), Tom Pelphrey (as Mank’s brother Joseph) and Tuppence Middleton playing Mank’s long-suffering but devoted wife Sara.
As far as resolving “whose” film Citizen Kane is…here’s one take, from a recent BFI essay by the always insightful Farran Smith Nehme (who blogs as the Self-Styled Siren):
Herman had a wealth of pent-up ideas – about lonely boyhoods, about newspapermen, about loyalty and hubris. Over the course of his stay in Victorville, Mankiewicz poured it all into 325 pages of a script called ‘American’, the extravagant title seeming to confirm that there was too much material for one movie to contain. In Mank, brother Joe tells him: “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done,” and for Herman, the confirmation is already superfluous.
Mank shows that Herman had signed a contract and accepted a bonus on the condition that Welles would get sole credit, but once the work is done, Herman reneges. The movie implies that in this instance, it was Welles punching up the script: “I’ll just run it through my typewriter,” he tells Herman.
People who revere Citizen Kane can choose whether or not to accept this scenario. Those who have read scholars such as Robert Carringer and Harlan Lebo excavating the surviving scripts and records at RKO, or essays by Joseph McBride or Jonathan Rosenbaum on the topic, almost certainly won’t.
In his 1978 biography, also titled Mank, Richard Meryman estimated Herman’s contribution to the final Kane script at 60 per cent, plus revisions he contributed later. Critic Pauline Kael, in her essay “Raising Kane”, put it at virtually 100 per cent, which even John Houseman said went too far. Houseman added, more to the point, that Citizen Kane “is Orson’s picture just as Stagecoach is John Ford’s picture, even though Dudley Nichols wrote it”.
Rule of thumb? Give credit where credit is due…when practical. Welles summed it up best when he said: “A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.”
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