Month: January 2021

“Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

Mother Jones’s David Corn wrote this back in 2016. It’s worth keeping in mind as we look forward to a post Trump era:

For decades, Trump has been an advocate of revenge. And now his revenge fantasies are running wild on a grand stage. Clinton assails him? He will pronounce her a criminal (and in league with a global conspiracy involving international bankers) and throw her into the slammer. Iranian sailors make rude gestures at US vessels? He will shoot them “out of the water.” His favorite form of revenge is escalation—upping the ante, screwing ’em more than they screwed you. And he clearly has been taking his own advice during this presidential race. These days, Trump is lashing out at his antagonists and the media. At this point—with Trump falling in the polls—it does not seems like a strategy for success. But given how revenge seems to be embedded in his DNA, Trump may not be able to help himself. Revenge as an ubertactic might work for him in business, but constantly behaving vengefully is hardly a positive attribute for a presidential candidate or a commander in chief.

One can only imagine how Trump’s profound desire for vengeance will play out, should he find himself a big loser on Election Day.

We know the answer to that now don’t we?

I would just remind everyone of this:

One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important…The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you, I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone,” or “Let’s leave this one,” or “Doris, let’s leave her alone. They fight too hard.”  I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back.

It’s called “Get Even.” Get even. This isn’t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. Other people see you or see you or see and they see how you react.

“There are a lot of bad people out there.  And you really have to go…If you have a problem, if you have a problem with someone, you have to go after them. And it’s not necessarily to teach that person a lesson. It’s to teach all of the people that are watching a lesson. That you don’t take crap. And if you take crap, you’re just not going to do well…But you can’t take a lot of nonsense from people, you have to go after them.”

“There are a lot of bad people out there.  And you really have to go…If you have a problem, if you have a problem with someone, you have to go after them. And it’s not necessarily to teach that person a lesson. It’s to teach all of the people that are watching a lesson. That you don’t take crap. And if you take crap, you’re just not going to do well…But you can’t take a lot of nonsense from people, you have to go after them.”

“I have some very very good friends and I guess I have some very good enemies. And I like it that way, somehow, and I really believe in trashing your enemies.”

Trump doesn’t really believe in much of anything. But he believes in this.

As you contemplate the fact that possible 140 House members and at least a dozen Senators are going to “object” to the certification of the election on Wednesday and demand a ten day audit of the election (taking the certification up to the 16th at the earliest) I’m sure you recall this:

Trump impeachment: ‘Let the people decide for themselves’ says president’s lawyer

Donald Trump’s legal team has closed their first day of defence arguments by criticising the impeachment prosecutors’ calls to remove President Trump from office.

White House Counsel Patrick Cipollone said voters should make the decision: “That’s what the founders wanted. That’s what we should all want.”

Sure. And all the Republicans except Romney voted to acquit Trump of his crimes based on that logic. Now they want to reject the will of the voters:

And Josh Hawley, the man who is leading the charge to overturn the election had a lot to say on that subject:

Apparently, impeaching a president under the rules laid out in the Constitution is usurping the will of the voters while pulling an unprecedented, partisan, sideshow even after the judiciary has already determined the election was fair is perfectly fine.

This is really beginning to worry me. I don’t think they can prevent Biden from being sworn in. But the fact that all these congressional representatives and Senators are willing to go this far is extremely unnerving. I’m no longer sure this is just an appeasement of Trump and his cult followers or even a way to rationalize further vote suppression. It’s starting to look as though they’re buying into the notion that this gambit is legit.

Trump’s voters think he’s all about them. Lol:

Two people familiar with the matter say that in recent days, Trump has told advisers and close associates that he wants to keep fighting in court past Jan. 6 if members of Congress, as expected, end up certifying the electoral college results.

“The way he sees it is: Why should I ever let this go?… How would that benefit me?” said one of the sources, who’s spoken to Trump at length about the post-election activities to nullify his Democratic opponent’s decisive victory.

I’m pretty sure he thinks this will benefit him:

Trump diehards from across the country have organized their travel to Washington on “The Donald” forum. One of the hottest topics on the site is how protesters can bring guns to D.C., which would count as a local crime in nearly all circumstances under Washington’s strict gun laws. Others have talked about breaking into federal buildings or committing violence against law enforcement officers who try to stop them from storming Congress.

“I’m thinking it will be literal war on that day,” one popular comment posted last Wednesday read. “Where we’ll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country.”

Both the November and December rallies in Washington saw violence, especially after nightfall. And that seems likely to be the case this coming rally too.Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed in a post on conservative social media network Parler that some Proud Boys would dress in black to disguise themselves as left-wing “antifa” protesters.

“Watch out, January 6 — you ain’t gonna know who the fuck it is standing beside you,” prominent Proud Boy Joe Biggs said in a video posted to Parler.

Rally supporters did, however, suffer a setback on Monday when the Hotel Harrington, a budget hotel in the nation’s capital, revealed that it would be closed during the protest. The hotel and its bar, Harry’s, have become hubs for MAGA activity in the city, even after the bar was fined for violating COVID-19 restrictions after being packed with Trump supporters. But both the hotel and the bar announced plans to close around the rally, a few weeks after four people were stabbed near the bar after a Dec. 12 pro-Trump event.

In response, Trump supporters fumed online and came up with unorthodox plans to find other sleeping arrangements, claiming they would instead camp in parks around the city despite the wintry weather.

“May God have his vengeance on the Hotel Harrington,” Ali Alexander, a lead organizer of Wednesday’s rally, said in a Twitter video Monday.

They seem nice.

Emptywheel had some interesting thoughts on this:

That may exert political pressure on Republican elected officials. It will surely foster [more] violence among Trump’s followers.

That leaves the United States with a twofold task if it will be successful at stepping back from the brink of authoritarianism it faced on November 3: first, in the middle of a pandemic and a time of escalating inequality, to prove that democracy can still provide tangible benefits to Americans. That will require that President Biden not only choose to pursue policies to address the malaise that made Trump possible, but that he’ll succeed in implementing such policies. With limited exceptions, that will first require convincing a sufficient number of Republicans to act to benefit the US rather than just the party, or at the very least, to understand benefit to the GOP to be something other than lockstep loyalty to Trump. It requires doing so at a time when much of the GOP believes (Trump’s underperformance compared to down ballot races notwithstanding) that they need Trump’s support to get reelected in 2022, one stated reason why some Republican Senators may join Josh Hawley’s cynical support for Trump’s challenge on Wednesday.

But the vote on Jan. 6 to certify Biden’s win is viewed within the GOP as a painful litmus test. Republicans either risk blowback or a primary challenge by approving Biden’s win amid Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud, or they can align themselves with Trump’s attempt to subvert the election results.

Trump has already shown little regard for those who are criticizing the efforts in the House and Senate to block Biden’s win. The president attacked Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) for the second time this week after Thune said Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win will go down like a “shot dog” in the upper chamber.

The president urged Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) to run against Thune, though Noem has already said she will not run against Thune. Trump in a tweet called Thune a “RINO” on Friday — a Republican In Name Only.

In short, something will need to break — or at least chip away at — the spell of authoritarian sycophancy that Trump has over the GOP.

We know now that a dozen (at least) will join. Frankly, I’m not sure why all but the mushy Romney and maybe Collins wouldn’t do it. They all voted to acquit him of his grotesque abuse of power to sabotage his opponent, after all.

Marcy continues:

Some of this may come of its own accord. For example, if Democrats manage to win the Georgia run-offs, Trump may try to claim that Republicans lost only because he had no reason to boost turnout. Still, if the GOP does lose the Senate after Trump spent months denigrating elections in Georgia, ultimately Senators will put some blame on Trump.

Trump’s luster may fade of his own doing. After all, a key part of his mystique comes from a belief that he has had any more success as a businessman that any other rich heir would be with the same money. Trump Organization is badly underwater, even absent the legal troubles facing the company in New York State. The pandemic will continue to suppress business travel at least for another four months. The private bankers at Deutsche Bank who’ve kept Trump afloat in recent years resigned some weeks ago. While Trump, personally, is entertaining offers for some media venture, it’s not clear any of then will provide a way to bail out his family company.

And increasingly, Trump will be deplatformed. While a significant swath of political journalists will continue air his grievances (it’s more fun than covering the kind of substantive policy debates that will return to DC), starting in three weeks Twitter no longer has a commitment to label, rather than delete, his tweets that violate Twitter policy. Rupert Murdoch has (at least temporarily) lost patience with Trump. Trump appears to be banking on sustainably being more important to the MAGAt base than Fox News; he believes he can take his followers with him to OANN or a Newsmax channel. And he’ll succeed, at least at first, to a point. But deplatforming of other right wing icons has shown that a significant portion of followers won’t make the effort to move off mainstream platforms (say, from Twitter to Parler). Without the same ability to juice the central conflicts of the day, Trump won’t have the same ability to remain one pole in a deliberately stoked polarization.

We’ll see how that works out. Trump is the frontrunner. And I have a suspicion that he’ll announce his intention to run sooner rather than later which means that he’ll get plenty of media attention whether we like it or not.

Nonetheless, it’s always possible that his cult will finally tire of his antics and he’ll fade in the polls which will indicate to the media and political establishment that his day is done. But I will just remind everyone that the one thing Trump is good at is getting attention. Just wait until he decides to embark on a world tour and meet with every authoritarian dictator on the planet. Whatever would they talk about?

I don’t even know what to say about that it’s so stupid. If this is the real reason Trump voters are having a massive temper tantrum because their boy didn’t win, they we may have to re-evaluate democracy. These people don’t have very basic reasoning skills.

Here is the polling on Donald Trump’s approval rating. He has always been unpopular. In fact he is the only president since polling began to never get above 50% approval during his term:

The day before the election, the polls looked like this:

The final:

This article by Andrew McCarthy of the National Review, an unrepentant Trump supporter, is interesting because it shows the struggle in the minds of some of those who still have a slight grasp on reason, despite their insistence that Democrats are evil satans from Mars:

It was always a dice-roll. But in this moment, the case for having supported the president’s reelection bid is harder to make.

In this moment, two tumultuous months after Election Day, the case for having supported the president’s reelection bid is harder to make. The backdrop for it will be more propitious in the coming months — when Joe Biden’s aping of Obama-style pen-and-phone government crashes into a strikingly more constitutionalist federal bench; when a return to appeasement of China and Iran has us fondly remembering Mike Pompeo; when the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s reset to its preferred racialized anti-police crusade has us recalling the good old days of Bill Barr, who carried on as if defending speech, economic, and conscience rights were actually a Justice Department mission; when reregulation suffocates an economy ignited by deregulation; and when “climate” returns to its lofty place as the caprice by which progressives pick the economy’s winners and losers while empowering America’s adversaries.

The Trump fanatics notwithstanding, the case for Trump, in 2020 as in 2016, was never based on the comparative merits and demerits of the man. It was Trump as opposed to whom? That’s still the most sensible way to look at it. It is, of course, why few anti-Trump conservatives framed their opposition as positive support for the Democrats, even if that was its de facto effect.

The hard part in this family squabble is not diagnosing the weakness of the other side’s argument. It is grappling with the weakness of my own. The problem with “Trump as opposed to whom?” is that we who’ve supported the president on that basis are less the bottom-line realists we see ourselves as, and more like riverboat gamblers. And what we’re gambling with is the country.

[…]

Some conservatives have moored themselves to Trump, persuaded that our “transactional” president is magnificent — that even his recent hop aboard the Bernie/Pelosi/Schumer free-money train, after doing nothing about runaway spending and unsustainable entitlements for four years, is somehow a brilliant play. If their man says the election was #RIGGED!, then there must have been pervasive fraud, notwithstanding the lack of evidence and the president’s propensity to fold his tent when federal judges — some of whom he himself appointed — invite him to prove his case in court.

For the reluctant supporter, however, Trump has always been a roll of the dice: Avoid the certain nightmare of Democrats in power, and hope potential catastrophes won’t overwhelm the capacity of the president’s capable aides to compensate for his glaring flaws.

Thus my contention in support of the Trump reelection bid: You don’t so much vote for a president as for an administration. But it has been easier for me to see the weakness of this contention over the last two months. There is no separating the president from the presidency, in competence or character, and this is never truer than in times of crisis.

Crisis, after all, is really why we have the presidency. In normal times, the quotidian details of governance are handled by an administration, now grown to thousands of bureaucrats. The real genius of the Framers was to plan for the inevitability of crises. They are best met with not only energy but decisiveness, the kind a chief executive is better positioned to provide than a council, committee, or parliament. That is the awesome power of the presidency and, for better or worse, of the president alone.

Presidents are thus defined by their crises. That goes not just for the ones that happen due to circumstances beyond presidents’ control, but also for the ones their own shortcomings blunder us into.

He goes on to insult President Obama as an elitist snob with a massive ego and describes Trump as a bloated clown, but not really as bad as he could have been, so everyone relax. And then:

Although not of his own making, the pandemic was a true crisis that brought out the worst in Trump rhetorically. He spoke without thinking things through, and indifferent to whether what he said was true. He spoke, with thousands dying, as if COVID-19 were an unfair thing done to him rather than a tragic blow to the nation. In point of fact, the president’s actions were often commendable. The ramp-up in protective gear, ventilators, and testing capacity was impressive, and done with deference to state sovereignty. The push to develop vaccines in less than a year is nothing short of astonishing. He’ll never get the credit he deserves for it.

Trump being Trump, he could never grasp that with the presidency comes the responsibility to give the bad news to us straight, and credibly. In a real crisis, Americans don’t want a reality-TV presidency. They don’t want to hear the leader of the free world’s take on the ratings of cable news shows and the NFL. They want a president who studiously tunes out the partisan sniping while projecting selfless strength and confidence that Americans are up to any challenge — which, as President Bush demonstrated after 9/11, tends to silence the sniping, at least for a while.

Here’s where he grapples with reality a little bit:

This is the biggest point the Trump diehards miss. How is it possible that a zilch like Biden could garner 12 million more votes than the charismatic Obama got in 2008? They emote this question as if the very asking proved the gargantuan but somehow elusive election fraud. As if the nation’s population had not grown by 25 million since 2008. As if Biden’s haul is inherently fishy but Trump’s 12 million-vote improvement over his total from just four years ago is perfectly natural.

Biden may be a trademark hack, but that’s not why he stayed in his basement. He did that because he and the president had the same idea: Make the election all about Trump. The president started out in 2017 as one whom 54 percent of the country had voted against. He remained personally unpopular with over half the country throughout his term, especially when the pandemic erased his surging economy while highlighting his incorrigible foibles. It is not at all hard to see how Biden could collect a record-setting 81 million popular votes. In the main, they were votes against Trump, not for Biden.

Since the election, we’ve had two months of a president publicly insisting the election was rigged while hoping no one noticed that his campaign expressly declined the invitation to prove massive fraud and illegality in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, Trump’s team did not just formally drop fraud charges, they explicitly represented to federal courts that they were not alleging fraud. Yet Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) now vows to join Trump’s House allies in objecting to the counting of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. And other states’ votes, too. Even Hawley does not claim that the election was stolen or that any known departures from Pennsylvania’s election laws would have changed the outcome. He just wants to “raise these critical issues.”

He then concludes that the real problem is that Democrats will surely start stealing elections in just this way because they are EVEN WORSE!

McCarthy was Trump’s staunchest supporter during the Russia investigation and I do wonder if he will ever face the fact that suspicions about a man of Trump’s low character, the man he describes here, were well-founded. I doubt it. And arguing that this is bad because Democrats will do it is cheap (although I have resorted to it when the shoe was on the other foot myself.)

Still, I think it’s important that he made the important point that 81 million people voted against Trump because they can’t stand him. I know that’s hard for Trumpers to admit — that their Dear Leader is despised by a majority of the country. But maybe it makes a small difference that someone like McCarthy points it out.

A federal judge on Friday threw out the lawsuit filed against President of the Senate Mike Pence by Rep. Louie Gohmert, (R-Texas) et al. demanding that on Jan. 6 he reject official slates of electors from swing states Donald Trump lost:

U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee based in Tyler, Texas, said the suit, which was filed against Pence, couldn’t be brought by an individual member of Congress, since it alleged an injury that would apply to the entire House and Senate.

Gohmert had asked the court to declare that Pence, who is constitutionally required to preside over the Jan. 6 session of Congress to certify the results of the 2020 election, had the sole authority to decide whether some of Biden’s electoral votes should be rejected — and whether alternative slates of Trump votes could be introduced instead. But Kernodle said Gohmert’s argument relied on entirely speculative circumstances.

Not to mention curious inferences about the founders’ deep convictions:

Mike Dunford (@questauthority) paraphrases satirically, “‘We live in a democratic republic in which the Vice President, who will more often than not be a candidate in the election, has the sole and unchallengeable power to decide who wins the election’ is a hellofa take.”

Gohmert wants you to know he is not asking the judge to overturn the presidential election, no way:

Responding to the dismissal on Newsmax TV, Gohmert at the very least countenanced violent insurrection as the only remedy left.

Republicans’ preferred rule for years has been “Heads, we win; tails, you lose.” Under Trumpism, Republicans have moved on. Now it’s “Heads, we win; tails, nice constitutional republic ya got here….”

Challenge Gohmert on his suggestion and will he go ‘George Costanza’, I wonder? “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing …”

Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia have attracted a historic level of attention. By the time it is over, a half-billion dollars is expected to have flowed into the state to help Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock defeat incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Stacey Abrams, founder of Fair Fight Action, jumped into an online DJ battle to urge the virtual audience to vote. “For right now, we can at least make sure that everyone shows up to vote,” she said, “so we have two senators to make sure we have covid response and we’ve got stimulus money coming back to Georgia.”

Half a billion in campaign expenditures is a good start. Maybe we should do this more often.

Despite historical trends being against Democrats in such contests, control of the Senate hinging on a pair of runoffs in a single state puts Tuesday’s elections in a different category. Wins by Ossoff and Warnock would give the Joe Biden administration the ability to pursue an aggressive legislative agenda for the next two years (Sens. Joe, Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, etc. permitting). It would also keep Vice President Kamala Harris in the national spotlight as the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate.

Democratic activists fueled by the flood of donations and constrained by the coronavirus are moving beyond traditional campaigning methods, reports the Washington Post:

To court Black voters, who make up a third of Georgia’s electorate and are one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting groups, more than a dozen groups are going beyond convention. They are hosting pop-up concerts and asking DJs at hip-hop clubs to encourage clubgoers to talk to “voting ambassadors” in VIP booths. Organizers are popping into Zoom birthday and graduation parties to talk about the importance of the election. And they have targeted immigrant communities and public housing projects — seeking out people characterized as low-propensity voters who may have been overlooked in previous elections.

Some have combined holiday season charity efforts with voter-education and rides-to-the-polls efforts. Mobilizing Black voters, a reliable Democratic constituency, is a key focus, not just in the Atlanta metro area but in Augusta, Savannah, Macon, Albany and Columbus.

“Where regular campaigns talk to voters two to five times a cycle, we try to talk to [Black men] at least 12 or 13 times,” said W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project. “When I talk to them, I’m not having a traditional political conversation. I’m having a conversation about giving them a tool to address some of the things plaguing them, and that tool is their vote. It’s not like I’m forcing politics on them in a political space. I’m talking to them in their space about politics, so it’s more comfortable, it’s more authentic to their life.”

Notably, the flood of cash into the accounts of such groups means some are able for the first time to pay a stipend to volunteers. With the havoc the pandemic has wrought on the economy and personal finances, the contests are a kind of financial stimulus of their own.

Abrams’s Fair Fight Action raised $22 million between Nov. 24 and Dec. 16, the Post reports. FFA gave away most of it to grass-roots organizations working to turn out voters of color, per a spokesman.

Helen Butler, the executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said the resources available combined with the political stakes allow her to do more. That flexibility is going around:

“Everybody understands the country is at stake, not just Georgia,” Butler said. “We’re getting a lot of support we don’t ordinarily get. . . . We’ve been doing this for 20 years. We’ve always had to do stuff with a lot of volunteers. This time we’re able to give people little stipends.”

[…]

Felicia Davis, convener of the Clayton County Black Women’s Roundtable, also a nonpartisan group, said the additional support has enabled her to hire more canvassers and give them a bigger stipend. She said she had 30 canvassers doing four hours a week at $15 per hour in the general election — now she has 50 canvassers at 30 hours per week and $20 per hour. And although she has more people and money, she wishes she had more time.

Face-to-face interactions are the most effective at turning out votes. In general elections with dozens of candidates vying for attention and volunteers’ time, only well-funded federal campaigns have the financial resources and attract the volunteer interest to mount statewide efforts of this scope, and then only in swing states. The rest get mailers, TV and social media ads and whatever catch-as-catch-can efforts state and local Democrats can muster with in-state fundraising and a coordinated-campaign allowance. Having only two Democrats on the ballot in a single state next Tuesday and a half billion dollars fueling get-out-the-vote efforts sets these contests apart.

Polling averages show a slight edge for both Democrats, for whatever that is worth. A record 3 million voters cast ballots early, and those will strongly favor Democrats and make Republicans nervous (voting in conservative districts lagged). But as always, Republicans bat last.

When the dust settles, what I will look for is any improved performance in counties where Democrats typically underperform. Georgia is blue today by the faintest of hues. The money flooding in to aid these activist groups will disappear after Tuesday as quickly as the light in your bedroom when you turn off the switch. What matters for Georgia’s future is what turnout infrastructure persists once the cash flow returns to a trickle and the dozens of local nonprofits return to trying to keep on their own lights.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Nashville bomber was a conspiracy theorist. Boy was he:

As investigators search for a possible motive behind the Christmas Day suicide bombing that rocked downtown Nashville, injuring three people and destroying several buildings, new details have emerged about the peculiar beliefs of the suspected bomber.

NBC News reported Wednesday that investigators have obtained evidence that Anthony Quinn Warner, who died in the explosion, may have subscribed to a conspiracy theory that many of the world’s most powerful figures, from Barack Obama to the late Bob Hope, are actually evil, lizard-like extraterrestrials in disguise. Officials told NBC News that investigators, who have been questioning friends and acquaintances and searching for clues of a possible motive for the bombing, have become aware of statements Warner made about the lizard people conspiracy theory — though it wasn’t immediately clear what those statements were. Authorities also reported that Warner made statements to others about hunting possible aliens during previous camping trips he took in his RV.

The so-called lizard people conspiracy theory has taken a back seat to some of the newer and more widely publicized baseless beliefs that have come to dominate the conspiracy landscape in recent years. But in 2013, a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling found that 12 million Americans believed that the country was run by lizard people in suits.

In some ways, lizard people believers were a precursor to QAnon, the insidious pro-Trump conspiracy movement that has snowballed from the dark corners of the internet into mainstream social media feeds and even the halls of Congress over the last three years. Like QAnon, which was founded on the myth that President Trump is secretly working to dismantle a “deep state” cabal of satanic pedophiles, the lizard people theory holds that a secret network of blood-guzzling “global elites” have engineered tragedies from the Holocaust to 9/11. But it gets worse: The nefarious world leaders and Hollywood celebrities responsible for so much misery are not actually humans but shape-shifting reptilian creatures of alien descent.

While both conspiracies feature many of the same villains, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, QAnon is arguably more politicized, with Trump and his allies on one side and pretty much everyone else on the other. Lizard people, on the other hand, are believed to be lurking across the political spectrum. Blogs dedicated to identifying our reptilian overlords have accused prominent Republicans like former President George W. Bush and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham of being lizard people, in addition to the queen of England, Madonna and Britney Spears.

Though the theory alleges that lizard people have been controlling human society since ancient times, David Icke, a BBC sports reporter-turned-conspiracy theorist and self-styled New Age philosopher, has been considered the leading exponent of the far-flung philosophy since 1998, when he published a book called “The Biggest Secret,” which claimed that members of the royal family were reptiles in disguise.

Federal investigators have reportedly been trying to determine whether Warner also believed in some of the more contemporary yet equally absurd conspiracy theories that have been circulating on the internet about 5G wireless communication networks. The Christmas morning explosion took place outside an AT&T building in Nashville, knocking out 911 service and disrupting AT&T service across the state. AT&T is one of the American telecommunication companies involved in rolling out 5G, the latest standard for broadband cellular networks, which is expected to dramatically increase data transfer speeds. (Verizon, which owns Yahoo News, is also a provider of 5G technology.)

This spring, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread across the globe, baseless rumors began circulating online claiming that the new cellular technology was somehow linked to COVID-19, prompting several fires targeting cell towers across Britain and other parts of Europe.

Though scientists have repeatedly debunked claims that COVID-19 is somehow caused by 5G technology, the conspiracy theory has persisted, gaining traction within the U.S. as well. As Yahoo News reported this week, law enforcement and intelligence agencies warned in May of escalating threats on social media calling for people to “target critical infrastructure including cell towers, locations associated with the electric power grid, and other sites associated with perceived impending government action against citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So far, authorities have not been able to pinpoint a specific motive for the Christmas explosion, though Warner’s girlfriend had reportedly warned police more than a year ago that the 63-year-old was building bombs in a recreational vehicle outside his house. If his goal was to free the world from domination by alien-descended reptiles in human form — well, he chose a fairly roundabout way of doing it.

Update: They’re all nuts:

THREAD:
#Obamagate was started by trolls.

Data is the only way to refute idiocies like Obamagate. Our @ncri_io report details how trolls start & spread conspiracy theories through “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, using Obamagate as a primary example.

Starting with #QAnon networks and worming its way to the White House twitter feed, #Obamagate sells nutjobs the idea that Obama (and a pedophile deepstate) controlled US Intelligence to try and jail President Trump so they could drink the blood of children and gain eternal life

Part of how #QAnon works is to create an interconnected mythology with more populist versions on the surface – Obama tried to get the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign – with craziness getting heavier the deeper you go: they were satanic deepstate pedophiles for instance…

This causes a sense of fantasy role play that draws users into labyrinth of interconnected lies and half-truths and intoxicates them with the allure of secret knowledge.

Originally tweeted by Congressman Denver Riggleman (@RepRiggleman) on January 1, 2021.

I’d like to think I’m an otter but I’m afraid I’m more of a bison. 2020 was rough.

I know I’ve been harping on the idea that our problem isn’t just Trump but rather the Republican Party that collaborated with him. Trump is a dangerous fool, of course. President’s have enormous power and he has a talent for appealing to a large number of people who are unfortunately subject to a charlatan demagogue’s charms.

But it’s the GOP establishment that we need to watch out for as well. Trump made it possible for them to burrow into the government and accomplish much of their agenda without much attention. It’s going to be very difficult to ferret them out and reverse the damage.

Here’s one profiled by Dana Milbank of the WaPo:

If, in the new year, pandemic vaccines aren’t available as promised, Americans can’t return to work because economic relief isn’t delivered or an adversary successfully attacks the United States because national security agencies couldn’t pay for new defenses, a hefty share of the blame should be placed on a man you’ve probably never heard of: One Russell Thurlow Vought.

As President Trump’s budget director, he conspicuously failed in his stated goal of controlling the debt. Despite his efforts, the debt increased by $6 trillion on his two-year watch as director of the Office of Management and Budget, the biggest jump in history.

He also has been disastrous in his fiscal forecasts. On Feb. 10, he predicted 2.8 percent growth for the year, saying, “our view is that, at this point, coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple effects.” A few weeks later, the economy collapsed.

But what Russ Vought is very good at is sabotage. He’s sabotaging national security, the pandemic response and the economic recovery — all to make things more difficult for the incoming Biden administration. That he’s also sabotaging the country seems not to matter to Vought, who has spent nearly two decades as a right-wing bomb thrower.

He has blocked civil servants at OMB from cooperating with the Biden transition, denying President-elect Joe Biden the policy analysis and budget-preparation assistance given to previous presidents-elect, including Barack Obama and Trump himself. Transition figures warn that it will likely delay and hamper economic and pandemic relief and national security preparation (the Pentagon is the other key agency resisting transition cooperation with the incoming administration)Thursday afternoon, Vought released a bombastic letter accusing the Biden transition of making “false statements” about OMB’s uncooperativeness — and then essentially confirming that it would not cooperate: “What we have not done and will not do is use current OMB staff to write the [Biden transition’s] legislative policy proposals to dismantle this Administration’s work. . . . Redirecting staff and resources to draft your team’s budget proposals is not an OMB transition responsibility. Our system of government has one President and one Administration at a time.”

Nobody should have expected otherwise from Vought.

He was the author of a Sept. 4 memo attacking critical race theory and canceling racial sensitivity programs, which he called “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” The issue, apparently prompted by a segment Trump viewed on Fox News, became key to the final weeks of Trump’s race-baiting campaign.

Vought was also the mastermind of Trump’s executive order that attempts to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants who work in policy roles so they can be easily fired. Vought has proposed reclassifying 88 percent of OMB staff (425 people).

He was a key figure in the Ukraine imbroglio, freezing military aid to the country as Trump pushed for Ukraine’s president to announce a probe of Joe and Hunter Biden and the Democrats. The Government Accountability Office determined the budgetary freeze violated the Impoundment Control Act. Vought also ignored a subpoena during the impeachment inquiry.

Vought’s 2017 nomination to be OMB deputy director (he later served 18 months as acting director and has served five as director) was nearly undone over a 2016 article in which he wrote: “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, his Son, and they stand condemned.”

Vought spent seven years on the vanguard of conservative extremism as a senior official at Heritage Action, the political wing of the Heritage Foundation. The group fought GOP leadership and pushed lawmakers into unyielding positions.

During that time, Vought wrote a series of rambling posts for RedState.com arguing that “incrementalism doesn’t work for the right,” that Republicans “are fundamentally in their DNA unwilling to fight” and that Republicans needed to have “a willingness” to shut the government down. He exhorted Republicans to “embrace the sort of brinkmanship that shows they are playing to win.” He railed against a 2012 infrastructure bill as “communism.”

Before Heritage, Vought worked for the right-wing House Republican Study Committee whose job, he said, “is to push leadership as far to the right as is possible and flat out oppose it when necessary.”

He has continued to lob grenades from inside the White House. At an antiabortion rally, he claimed credit for blocking Planned Parenthood’s funding. He infuriated Democrats by refusing to share projections with Congress.

But when it comes to governing, Vought has been a loser. He ran the botched White House response to the 2019 government shutdown, issuing legally dubious decisions and, as one Republican budget expert told The Post, “making up the rules as they go along.” It became the longest-ever shutdown and ended in Trump’s surrender.

Now Vought is intentionally botching the transition, without regard for the dire consequences Americans could suffer. This is what happens when you put an arsonist in charge of the fire department.

Trump didn’t know or care about any of this. He was running for re-election the entire first term and that was all he ever cared about. It was all he knew how to do. But the busy wingnut bees were hard at work. And now they are setting a massive minefield across the federal government in order to sabotage Biden’s presidency.

Don’t be surprised if the establishment rallies around Trump for a 2024 run. His administration has been very, very good for their agenda. He didn’t have a clue and neither did their voters. Their Big Money donors knew, though. And that’s just the way they wanted it.