Month: May 2021

The New York Times has a new report on some of the nefarious Trumper activity during his presidency. A lot of this kind of crazy stuff went on during Trump’s term. If he somehow gets back in I’m pretty sure they’ve learned some lessons in how to do it more successfully:

 A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

The campaign shows the obsession that some of Mr. Trump’s allies had about a shadowy “deep state” trying to blunt his agenda — and the lengths that some were willing to go to try to purge the government of those believed to be disloyal to the president.

Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018.

Last year, The New York Times reported that Mr. Seddon ran an expansive effort to gain access to the unions and campaigns and led a hiring effort that nearly tripled the number of the group’s operatives, according to interviews and deposition testimony. He trained operatives at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming.

The efforts to target American officials show how a campaign once focused on exposing outside organizations slowly morphed into an operation to ferret out Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies in the government’s ranks.

Whether any of Mr. Trump’s White House advisers had direct knowledge of the campaign is unclear, but one of the participants in the operation against Mr. McMaster, Barbara Ledeen, said she was brought on by someone “with access to McMaster’s calendar.”

At the time, Ms. Ledeen was a staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, then led by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

When confronted with details about her involvement in the McMaster operation, Ms. Ledeen insisted that she was merely a messenger. “I am not part of a plot,” she said.

Yeah, right. Ledeen and her father Michael Ledeen go way, way back in wingnuttia. This plot was discussed briefly last February although I don’t think we knew about this McMaster thing:

A well-connected network of conservative activists with close ties to Trump and top administration officials is quietly helping develop these “Never Trump”/pro-Trump lists, and some sent memos to Trump to shape his views, per sources with direct knowledge.

Members of this network include Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Republican Senate staffer Barbara Ledeen.

The big picture: Since Trump’s Senate acquittal, aides say the president has crossed a psychological line regarding what he calls the “Deep State.” He feels his government — from Justice to State to Defense to Homeland Security — is filled with “snakes.” He wants them fired and replaced ASAP.

[…]

Shortly before withdrawing the nomination of the former D.C. U.S. attorney for a top Treasury role, the president reviewed a memo on Liu’s alleged misdeeds, according to a source with direct knowledge.

Ledeen wrote the memo, and its findings left a striking impression on Trump, per sources with direct knowledge. Ledeen declined to comment.

A source with direct knowledge of the memo’s contents said it contained 14 sections building a case for why Liu was unfit for the job for which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin selected her, including:

Neither Liu nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

Between the The Liu memo is not the first such memo to reach the president’s desk — and there’s a common thread in Groundswell, a conservative activist network that’s headed by Thomas and whose members include Ledeen.

[…]

Thomas has spent a significant amount of time and energy urging Trump administration officials to change the personnel inside his government. This came to a head early last year.

Members of Groundswell, whose members earlier led the successful campaign to remove McMaster as national security adviser, meet on Wednesdays in the D.C. offices of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has led the fight against the Mueller probe.

Judicial Watch’s president is Tom Fitton. He’s a regular on Fox News, and Trump regularly retweets his commentary on the “Deep State.”

Conservative activists who attend Groundswell meetings funneled names to Thomas, and she compiled those recommendations and passed them along to the president, according to a source close to her.

She handed a memo of names directly to the president in early 2019. (The New York Times reported on her group’s meeting with Trump at the time.)

The presidential personnel office reviewed Thomas’ memo and determined that some names she passed along for jobs were not appropriate candidates. Trump may revisit some given his current mood.

Potential hires she offered to Trump, per sources with direct knowledge:

Sheriff David Clarke for a senior Homeland Security role.

Fox News regular and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for a Homeland Security or counterterrorism adviser role.

Devin Nunes aide Derek Harvey for the National Security Council (where he served before McMaster pushed him out).

Radio talk show host Chris Plante for press secretary.

Federalist contributor Ben Weingarten for the National Security Council.

[…]

As the New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote on Saturday, “in some of the most critical corners of the Trump administration, officials show up for work now never entirely sure who will be there by the end of the evening — themselves included.”

Groundswell is an influential driver of that uncertainty. Its members have been working toward this moment for three years. They have lists. They have memos. And they have the president’s ear.

Groundswell has been around for a long time. And they are the looniest of right wing loons. The wife of a Supreme Court Justice involving herself in this kind of “activism” is outrageous. And Ledeen is a hard-core character assassin from way back. These people are always crawling around in the dark, scurrying when the lights come on.

Joe Manchin has signaled that he would like to pass a voting rights bill but once again, he’s insisting that it must be bipartisan. In other words, he won’t reform the filibuster to get it done. And that means getting ten right wing fanatics on board.

Good luck:

It didn’t take long for a supposedly bipartisan compromise on voting rights legislation that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is floating to get dumped on by a key Republican.

At a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to vote on one of President Biden’s key Justice Department nominees, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) didn’t call out Manchin by name. But he referenced a proposal Manchin has recently floated — first to a local news outlet, and then more explicitly in an interview Wednesday with ABC News — for addressing voting rights.

Manchin is currently the lone Senate Democrat not publicly supporting the For The People Act, Democrats’ sprawling democracy overhaul legislation that would beat back many of the restrictive state-level voting policies advancing across the county. The For the People Act — also known as S1 — stands no chance of becoming law for as long as Manchin and other centrist Democrats oppose blowing up the filibuster to ram it through.

Manchin says he would not support major elections legislation done on a purely partisan basis. Instead, Manchin has suggested that lawmakers focus on a restoring the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The Supreme Court invalidated the formula that determined which states  — based on their history of discriminating against minority votes — must get federal approval for changes to their election practices.

Manchin is now pitching a fix to the Voting Rights Act that would subject all 50 states to the so-called preclearance process. That goes farther than the VRA restoration legislation that has been previously introduced, which is moving separately from s1 so Democrats can create the kind of legislative record that will make the law more resistant to legal attack. Manchin nonetheless has described the approach as something to be done with bipartisan support.

On Thursday, Cornyn signaled that such an idea would not get much buy-in from the Republican Party.

He characterized it in suspicious terms. The idea of a 50-state preclearance system has only been outlined by Manchin in vague terms, which to Cornyn, meant that there is an “effort afoot” to do through the “back door” what S1 was trying to do through the “front door:” a supposed federal “takeover” of the U.S. election system.

He then used the notion of a 50-state preclearance system to take another whack at Kristen Clarke, the nominee to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division whose confirmation was being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

“I know that Ms. Clarke, if she is confirmed —as she probably will be, unfortunately, without my support — will be integral to that process,” Cornyn said, while suggesting she would not be impartial in her handling of approving election policy changes.

When the Voting Rights Act was last renewed by Congress, it had unanimous support in the Senate. But since the 2013 Supreme Court decision, Republicans have been cagey about what kind of fix they would support and refused to take up any VRA revival legislation while they were in control of Congress.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — a retiring Republican in Senate leadership who voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act during the 2006 renewal— told TPM this week he is in discussions with a few Democrats about restoring the VRA. But he wouldn’t say what kind of pre-clearance formula he would support. Nor could he say whether a bill fixing the VRA would ultimate get the 10 Republican votes it would need to overcome a Senate filibuster.

It is more likely that Republicans would sign on to banning semi-automatic weapons than they are to sign on to this. This is existential for them. They have alienated so many people with their extremism and devotion to Donald Trump that they simply must suppress the vote of Democrats or they will be completely out of power.

Not that this is surprising in any way, but it appears that Fox News is not only pushing The Big Lie, it’s pushing the bogus “remedy” in the states. This is important because it’s validating not only Dear Leader, it’s serving s validation for what the Republican Party is doing to abuse the democratic system for their political gain.

A Media Matters analysis shows that in the month and a half after Georgia’s voter suppression law was signed into effect on March 25, Fox News proceeded to defend or advocate for the newly codified restrictions on the right to vote in 270 segments. In fact, while a wide coalition of business leaders, democracy advocates, and local officials condemned the provisions of the Georgia law that were blatantly aimed at restricting the franchise in the wake of Republicans’ narrow 2020 losses in the state, Fox News aggressively took the opposite approach — framing 78% of all its segments on the law with the aforementioned support.

Fox News’ overwhelming push to justify the Georgia law stands in stark contrast to the analyses of independent experts and fact-checkers, who confirmed that crucial parts of the legislation were partisan power grabs and voter suppression, plain and simple. Dozens of companies have also come out publicly against voter suppression bills and restrictions on the right to vote across the country, including in Georgia. But some of these companies — such as General Motors and Dell Technologies — are heavy advertisers on Fox News. They should note that Fox is already well underway in its support of voter suppression efforts in Texas, Florida, and other states, just as it did with Georgia.

Previously known as Senate Bill 202, the Georgia law makes receiving and casting absentee votes more difficult, targets early voting in populous counties that tend to vote Democratic, increases the likelihood that legal provisional ballots will be discarded, bars additional funding for voter access from third parties, and shamelessly manipulates the composition of the state election board, as it empowers the Republican legislature to suspend local — and Democratic — election officials.

Despite the continued lies of former President Donald Trump and right-wing media, none of these changes can be justified on the grounds of preventing voter fraud, a problem that does not exist in significant numbers either nationally or in Georgia.

Nevertheless, Fox News went all in on defending Georgia’s voter suppression law, a programming strategy that was not confined to the network’s “opinion” shows. From March 25 to May 9, Fox News had 344 segments about Georgia’s law and 270 of those segments, 78%, advocated for or defended the legislation. Fox & Friends, which aired 38 segments that defended the voter suppression law, led the charge, and America’s Newsroom (24 segments), Hannity (22 segments), and America Reports (19 segments), followed closely behind.

The network also hosted Republican Gov. Brian Kemp at least 11 times during that period, and he at times used the platform to attack companies that had spoken out against the law. In one interview with prime-time host Tucker Carlson, Kemp called corporations that had penned a letter against the law “hypocritical,” while Carlson asked of Delta Air Lines and The Coca-Cola Company, “Why doesn’t someone say, make your little diabetes-causing soft drinks, fly your little airplanes, why don’t you stay out of democracy?”

In the course of defending the law, Fox figures lied that it would actually make voting easier, lied that Georgia’s voting laws are similar to Colorado’s (where Major League Baseball moved the All-Star game), aired misleading graphics, and misled viewers about the Republican power grab over the process of overseeing the election. 

Fox News has also not been shy about pushing Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election results were supposedly fraudulent in Georgia and nationwide, a falsehood that has now been incorporated into the network’s defense of voter suppression on the spurious grounds of “election integrity.”

And it’s not just in Georgia that Fox News is defending restrictions on the right to vote. The network has started to defend the new voter suppression laws coming from other Republican-led states as well. On May 6, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis even signed Florida’s law live on Fox & Friends. As of May 9, 5 out of 8 Fox News segments (63%) on Florida’s new voter restrictions have advocated for them, while 10 out of 12 segments (83%) on Texas’ proposed voter suppression legislation — expected to be signed into law shortly — have also been supportive. Republican leaders from these states have also made multiple appearances on the network to defend various voter suppression laws, including the ones in Florida and Texas. DeSantis has made 3 appearances on the subject while Texas’ Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have both made two appearances each.

It’s vitally important to always keep in mind that there is no systematic voter fraud of any kind. There was no cheating in the last election. These actions are all about preventing Democrats from voting in future elections. Fox News is onboard that nefarious anti-democratic project 100%. And they know very well it’s bullshit.

It looks like somebody should have been a little bit more careful:

New York prosecutors have subpoenaed a Manhattan private school as they seek the cooperation of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer in their investigation of former President Donald Trump and his company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoena seeks information from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where grandchildren of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg are students, the people said. From 2012 to 2019, more than $500,000 of the children’s tuition was paid for with checks signed by either Mr. Weisselberg or Mr. Trump, the two children’s mother, Jennifer Weisselberg, told The Wall Street Journal. She is the former wife of Mr. Weisselberg’s son Barry.

Ms. Weisselberg said she told Manhattan prosecutors that she and Barry understood the tuition payments to be part of her ex-husband’s compensation package at the Trump Organization, where he worked. Former prosecutors not involved in the probe said the Manhattan district attorney’s office could be examining whether the Weisselbergs evaded taxes with the tuition-payment arrangement.

The subpoena marks a separate front in the investigation of Mr. Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office, which has for months been seeking Allen Weisselberg’s cooperation, according to people familiar with the matter.  Mr. Weisselberg has worked for the Trump Organization for decades and is regarded as Mr. Trump’s confidante and his company’s financial gatekeeper. Mr. Weisselberg hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

Prosecutors often seek the cooperation of someone possibly involved in a crime to obtain confidential information and provide a potential road map to records or documents. Typically, prosecutors offer a potential defendant leniency in exchange for their help. Putting pressure on a possible defendant’s family is one way to encourage cooperation.

People who know Mr. Weisselberg say he is faithful to the Trump Organization, and questioned whether he would ever breach that loyalty. In 2017, Mr. Weisselberg became a co-trustee charged with managing the president’s business assets.

The district attorney’s office has said it is conducting a complex financial investigation into possible loan, bank or insurance fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers. Prosecutors have subpoenaed lenders, an insurance broker and other entities for financial information about Trump properties in New York City, Westchester County, N.Y., and elsewhere.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump has called the investigation a witch hunt and said it was politically motivated.

Frank Perrone Jr., a lawyer for Columbia Prep, said it is the school’s practice to comply with all lawful requests made by authorities.

I have no doubt that Trump is a criminal. But I won’t be surprised if they are unable to prove it because the laws he’s broken are so commonly broken by richie rich heirs to big fortunes like him.

Trump is a very lucky man and has never been held accountable for anything he ever did. And if anyone tried he screamed like a little baby until everyone gave up just to get him to stay quiet. He got off scott free despite selling out the country’s interests for his financial and political interests more than once . He was impeached twice and yet is still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

So, I’m not holding my breath on this either. But there seems to be some very serious belief among prosecutors that there has been some wrongdoing by the Trump Organization for which they need Alan Weisselberg’s cooperation to effectively make the case. I don’t think they’d go this far if they didn’t have quite a bit of evidence already. So, with that caveat not to get your hopes up — stay tuned.

This is just gross:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene aggressively confronted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday and falsely accused her of supporting “terrorists,” leading the New York congresswoman’s office to call on leadership to ensure that Congress remains “a safe, civil place for all Members and staff.”

Two Washington Post reporters witnessed Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) exit the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon ahead of Greene (Ga.), who shouted “Hey Alexandria” twice in an effort to get her attention. When Ocasio-Cortez did not stop walking, Greene picked up her pace and began shouting at her and asking why she supports antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists, and Black Lives Matter, falsely labeling them “terrorist” groups. Greene also shouted that Ocasio-Cortez was failing to defend her “radical socialist” beliefs by declining to publicly debate the freshman from Georgia.

“You don’t care about the American people,” Greene shouted. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”

Ocasio-Cortez did not stop to answer Greene, only turning around once and throwing her hands in the air in an exasperated motion. The two reporters were not close enough to hear what the New York congresswoman said, and her office declined to discuss her specific response.

“Representative Greene tried to begin an argument with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and when Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tried to walk away, Congresswoman Greene began screaming and called Rep. Ocasio-Cortez a terrorist sympathizer,” Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement. “We hope leadership and the Sergeant at Arms will take real steps to make Congress a safe, civil place for all Members and staff — especially as many offices are discussing reopening. One Member has already been forced to relocate her office due to Congresswoman Greene’s attacks.”

Before walking away, Greene said that the encounter was intended to hold Democrats accountable for their policy proposals.

“She’s a chicken, she doesn’t want to debate the Green New Deal,” she said to a small group of reporters and onlookers near the entrance to the chamber. “These members are cowards. They need to defend their legislation to the people. That’s pathetic.”

There was a time that I would say that the leadership is going to have to rein her in or that she would be punished by the voters but we know that this disgusting, adolescent, bullying behavior is now the norm for the Republican party. I honestly can’t think of the line would draw with her. There probably isn’t one.

Marcy Wheeler this morning points to a ProPublica post on the redicalization of Jan. 6 insurrectionists held in jail awaiting hearings. Guy Reffitt’s wife helped him draft the letter below. Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto from the wilds of Montana it is not. Three Percenters, etc. are more about public cosplay and mayhem than mail bombs and manifestos.

The other day ProPublica published a letter and profile Guy Reffitt, the Jan 6 defendant who threatened to kill his son if the son turned him in. https://t.co/1DjzkJ2jXx

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 13, 2021

I've said that the jailing of these insurrectionists will be a long-term problem. Huge numbers of people get radicalized in jail/prison as it is. Here, you've got the most violent Jan 6ers sharing notes in the DC jail.

They should have left them all in local jails thru COVID.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 13, 2021

ProPublica paints a picture of a man radicalized before his arrest. He is a “serious danger … not only to his family and Congress, but to the entire system of justice,” prosecutors allege:

Reffitt saw his actions on Jan. 6 as a critical step in protecting his wife and kids from what he viewed as a decades-long American slide toward “tyranny,” according to his text messages.

“We watch the people of other countries rise up against authoritarianism and think, how sad they must be to want freedom and liberty so much,” the letter said. “Here, the more you try to divide, bend or even break America. The more The Republic of The People will stand indivisible and resolute.”

Reffitt’s son covertly recorded conversations with his father that have shown up in court filings as evidence that Reffitt came to the Capitol armed and with violent intentions.

“You’ll find out that I had every constitutional right to carry a weapon and take over the Congress, as we tried to do,” he said in one recording, according to a transcript in court files. Jackson Reffitt, 18, has since moved out of the family home and is raising money to support himself and his schooling.

In another excerpt in court files, Guy Reffitt was blunt: “I did bring a weapon on property that we own. Federal grounds or not. The law is written, but it doesn’t mean it’s right law. The people that were around me were all carrying too.”

Reffitt’s wife and daughters said his statements were more benign than they sound — that Reffitt is notorious for his hyperbole and left the Capitol when he learned rioters had made it inside. Nicole Reffitt said she has long referred to her husband teasingly as “Queenie” because of his flair for the dramatic. Prosecutors have not accused him of entering the Capitol building or hurting anyone.

In their most recent filing, prosecutors added new evidence to their case against Guy Reffitt. They obtained a recording of a Jan. 10 Zoom meeting involving Reffitt and two other Three Percenters. In it, Reffitt allegedly said he helped lead the charge on the Capitol with a .40-caliber pistol at his side, at one point telling a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was firing nonlethal rounds at him, “Sorry, darling. You better get a bigger damn gun.”

Despite evidence that several groups came prepared to do coordinated battle (many brought communications gear, one brought pipe bombs, another Molotov cocktails), Reffitt’s letter claims there is no organization among the detainees.

During the House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday, Rep. Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, claimed the Justice Department was “harassing peaceful patriots.” Sure, most of them were peaceful until they were not. Neither was Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh until….

Donald Trump’s “pathological lying and malignant personality” is a key reason why he appeals to Christian fundamentalists, Matthew Sheffield writes in a tweet thread Wednesday.

“Big Lies are incredibly powerful but they’re also incredibly fragile. They crumble at the slightest challenge,” Sheffield writes. Neither Trump’s political thralls nor his base can abide that. “If Jesus was the Word made flesh, Trump is fundamentalists’ will to power made flesh.” The righteous submit to that power. To resist is apostasy.

That in part explains Rep. Liz Cheney’s expulsion from Republican House leadership Wednesday. Not because she disagrees with Trump, but because she does so publicly.

Thread: Liz Cheney, Trump, and the epistemic collapse of fundamentalism

Liz Cheney was expelled today by House Republicans from their leadership. The defenestration has been rightfully construed as a byproduct of Trumpism in the GOP, which is true, but there's much more to it.

— Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) May 12, 2021

But it is more than that for fundamentalists, Sheffield believes. Not only are they desperate to maintain cultural control over the U.S., but to contain the threat to one of their core doctrines: biblical inerrancy.

Sheffield writes at Flux:

Seventy years after Buckley penned God and Man at Yale, the conservative project of “standing athwart history yelling stop” has been a dismal failure. Despite millions of dollars spent on “creation science” museums and “intelligent design” propaganda, 97 percent of scientists interviewed by the Pew Research Center say humans evolved from animals. Likewise, contrary to the predictions of fundamentalists, scholars of the ancient world keep finding evidence that the Hebrews were never in Egypt, that Yahweh was the member of a Canaanite pantheon as was his wife Asherah, and that the global flood portrayed in the Noah story never happened and was actually lifted from an earlier Mesopotamian myth.

Most conservative activists have never heard of such scholarly developments, however, because the American right essentially closed its intellectual canon decades ago, content with the belief that anything worth knowing about religion, history, and government could be learned from the Bible—with a little assistance from the “Founding Fathers,” who supposedly made a covenant with God to make the future United States become a nation for Christians. The dual fundamentalisms of politics and faith had a beguiling symmetry, one that only circular reasoning can engender.

Big Lies may be powerful, but so is science. Technological advancement is its own press agent. Even fundamentalists have on some level accepted science as a powerful tool for sussing out fact, if not capital-T truth. But faith and science are different cognitive domains. Rather than acknowledge that, fundamentalists bought into the notion that science somehow challenges their belief system and, particularly, the folk belief that the Bible is authoritative history. So much wasted evangelical energy over the last century and a half has gone into erecting a bulwark against science. Especially against the theory of evolution. Instead of insisting that faith is trans-rational, they attempted to prove that the Bible was not only good history but good science.

“Instead of returning to traditional metaphorical heuristics in which scripture is not literally true, Christian fundamentalists have instead begun attacking the very idea of secular knowledge at all,” Sheffield tweets. This trend points to what makes Trump their cultural hero (emphasis mine) :

They would rather implode their entire epistemology than admit it was faulty.

The urgency of their errand has been greatly hastened by the growing sense of loss fundamentalists feel daily as they see their sons leave religion, their daughters come out as bi, and Muslims move in down the street.

In this suffocating intellectual climate, truth is not what you can prove, but that which you can force others to accept.

This mentality is why Trump’s pathological lying and malignant personality has been so deeply embraced by fundamentalist conservatives.

Donald says it. They believe it. That settles it. Believers submit. Heretics resist.

Truth is whatever you can force others to accept. Trump and his cult want to force others to accept theirs.

"I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election”.
Kevin McCarthy pic.twitter.com/yfegsYIn1v

— Jérôme Cartillier (@jcartillier) May 12, 2021

It isn’t Joe Biden. It’s Kevin McCarthy.

President Biden met on Wednesday with Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress for the first time since taking office, but the discussion appeared to make only modest progress toward resolving disagreements on Mr. Biden’s proposals to spend $4 trillion on infrastructure and families.

The closed-door meeting at the White House included Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader; Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader; and their counterparts in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. Vice President Kamala Harris also attended.

As the group assembled in the Oval Office, Mr. Biden told reporters that he hoped to find common ground on infrastructure spending. He joked that he would like to just “snap my fingers” to achieve that goal despite fierce Republican opposition to his plans.

“The bottom line here is we’re going to see whether we can reach some consensus on a compromise,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re going to talk a lot about infrastructure.”

After the 90-minute meeting ended, the Republican leaders said it had been productive. But both Mr. McConnell and Mr. McCarthy said they remained unwilling to consider any of the tax increases that Mr. Biden has suggested to pay for the spending.

That’s very hopeful, no?

In case you were wondering if McCarthy was negotiating in good faith:

And in a campaign text to supporters shortly after the meeting, Mr. McCarthy sought to raise money by saying, “I just met with Corrupt Joe Biden and he’s STILL planning to push his radical Socialist agenda onto the American people.”

The party of law and order weighs in on January 6th:

Four GOP lawmakers claimed during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on Wednesday that the real victims of the Jan. 6 insurrection were the Trump supporters who were hurt as they illegally stormed the Capitol—not the hundreds of police officers who were injured, or the Capitol staff who were terrorized.

Conspiracy-peddling Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), blamed the media for a false representation of the riots and claimed that Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by Capitol Police while trying to break into the House chamber with a U.S. flag draped over her, was “executed.” In contrast, he said, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the wake of the riot, merely died of natural causes. He claimed the DOJ was “harassing peaceful patriots across the country” in its efforts to charge those involved in the riot.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) echoed Gosar, saying it was “Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.”

Rep Andrew Clyde (R-GA) chimed in: “There was no insurrection. To call it an insurrection is a bold-faced lie.” He likened the mob who entered the Capitol to people on a “normal tourist visit.” Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) insisted that group were not rioters, just a “mob of misfits.”

None of their GOP brethren set them straight. Gosh, if I didn’t know better I might think they agree with them.

Military wingnuts have always been with us. But these guys are way out in Jack D. Ripper territory:

A day after 124 retired generals and admirals released a letter spreading the lie that President Joe Biden stole the election, current and former military officers are speaking out, calling the missive a dangerous new sign of the military being dragged into the trenches of partisan warfare.

The open letter on Monday from a group calling itself Flag Officers 4 America advanced the false conspiracy theory that the presidential vote was rigged in Biden’s favor and warned that the nation is “in deep peril” from “a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights.”

“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration,” they wrote, “our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic.”

The broadside also raises questions about “the mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief” and sounds the alarm about a host of hot-button issues, such as the border wall. It goes on to accuse congressional leaders of “using the U.S. military as political pawns with thousands of troops deployed around the U.S. Capitol Building.”

The group’s website claims that “we are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776.”

These are ex-military officers. Apparently, they think Joe Biden is a greater threat than Hitler.

As news of the letter spread, it set off a round of recriminations among current and former military members. One serving Navy officer, who did not want to be identified publicly, called it “disturbing and reckless.”

Jim Golby, an expert in civil-military relations, called it a “shameful effort to use their rank and the military’s reputation for such a gross and blatant partisan attack,” while a retired Air Force colonel who teaches cadets at the Air Force Academy, Marybeth Ulrich, labeled it “anti-democratic.”

“I think it hurts the military and by extension it hurts the country,” said retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describing it as replete with “right-wing Republican talking points.”

The talking points in the letter fall generally in line with die-hard loyalists in Trump’s orbit, who question the results of the election despite the fact that the courts and Trump’s own Justice Department said there was no reason to declare him the winner.

Notable signatories included retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who stirred controversy for some of his anti-Muslim views and is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who was the deputy national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan and was convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair.

Names like Boykin and Poindexter are predictable far right wingnuts. I suppose it’s not surprising they are not alone. But their hysteria over America turning Marxist because Joe Biden wants to provide elder care and fix the falling infrastructure is a bit much. It’s not like Biden incited his followers to storm the capitol and hang his own VP or anything. That really would be alarming.