Month: May 2021

I have thought of this so often over the past few months. This guy was seen as a clown at the time but it turns out he understood Trump a whole lot better than we gave him credit for:

I thought that was over the top at the time. I honestly couldn’t conceive of how he could do it. But, of course, he did.

Because of that I tend to take what he’s seriously these days. Here’s what he says about Rudy:

Ask Rudy Giuliani, or his son, Andrew, if the former mayor of New York City is in legal trouble at the moment, and you’ll undoubtedly get an eye-bulging, hands-flailing response that Donald Trump’s personal attorney has done nothing wrong in his life and that the only person who should be worried about his legal exposure is Hunter Biden. Obviously, that is not true at all given that (1) Giuliani’s multiyear quest to dig up dirt on the president‘s son uncovered nothing, and (2) experts say Rudy is very much in trouble. Calling Wednesday‘s raid on Giuliani‘s apartment and office an “extremely significant” escalation of the federal investigation into his Ukraine dealings, former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara said this week that there is a strong chance the former New York City mayor will be charged. At that point, prison could be in his future.

All of which makes Michael Cohen, who was once in a very similar situation, think Giuliani is “absolutely” going to turn on Trump to save himself. Appearing on CNN on Thursday, the ex-president’s former “fixer,” who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, predicted that Rudy is sweating profusely at the moment, and despite whatever he and his son claim, knows that he’s in trouble. Why? For starters, he ran the Southern District of New York, which is currently investigating him, from 1983 to 1989 and knows what kind of power it holds. “There’s no doubt that he’s nervous…. And it’s rightfully so that he’s nervous, because he knows the power of the SDNY is unlimited, and they use that power,” Cohen told Alisyn Camerota. Noting that Giuliani likely “has no interest in going to prison and spending the golden years of his life behind bars,” Cohen said, “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.”

Michael Cohen on the Giuliani raid: "First is that I’m no longer the only one. And two, my parents always told me it’s not nice to gloat, but Rudy, I told you so. I told you so…he will be the next one to be thrown under the bus." pic.twitter.com/TUErOXHGss

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 29, 2021

Which, of course, would be an unfortunate turn of events for the ex-president who is already facing all kinds of legal trouble, not to mention potentially bad news for his children. “What’s ironic here,” Cohen told Camerota, “is the fact that these tactics of the Southern District of New York, in terms of bullying you into a plea deal, were created by Rudy Giuliani going back 30 years ago. And it’s just ironic that the tactics that he created for that office are now going to be employed against him, in terms of making him plead guilty and, certainly, at the least, turning over information about Jared, Ivanka, about Don Jr., about Donald himself, about all of these individuals in that garbage can orbit of Donald Trump.” He added that one cannot even imagine the trove of shadiness the Feds may uncover as a result of seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices:

Who knows what Rudy was involved with. What we’re going to find out is, there are text messages, there are emails, there are different types of communication apps that the FBI knows how to reestablish, even if Rudy, who I don’t think is technological, tried to—tried to delete or what have you…. And what happens is, they may be starting the investigation looking at things like the Ukrainian conversations between himself, Lev Parnas, and others [and then] you may end up finding that Jared Kushner was involved or Don Jr. or a host of other individuals in Trump’s orbit. And what happens then is that the Southern District, they end up expanding the probe….

We have no idea how expansive that this investigation is going to ultimately reveal itself, because Rudy’s an idiot. And that’s the problem. Rudy drinks too much. Rudy behaves in such an erratic manner that, who knows what’s on those telephones or what’s on his computers?

Asked if he thinks Donald Trump is scared about what may come out of the Rudy situation, Cohen said there was no question the ex-president is currently soiling himself. “He was afraid even when they raided my home and my law office,” Cohen said. “Because Donald Trump cares about only one person, and I say it all the time. He cares about only himself. So, he doesn’t care that they raided Rudy’s home. He doesn’t care that they raided Rudy’s law office. What is it going to do to affect me, is all that he’s thinking right now. What did stupid Rudy do? What did stupid Rudy write? What sort of text messages or emails? What sort of stupid things was Rudy up to that’s now going to implicate me? Because Donald knows he has enough trouble right now between Tish James and the attorney general’s office, as well as Cy Vance and the district attorney’s office here in New York…. He knows that he has all sorts of legal issues. He didn’t need more. That’s one thing I can assure you. He definitely didn’t need more. And Rudy is going to be, you know, a treasure trove. In all fairness, Merrick Garland is like Santa Claus, and Rudy’s devices are going to be like the presents that are waiting for you on Christmas day…. And what do I think? I think Rudy knows that he has trouble. I think Donald understands that Rudy will provide whatever information that he has to the SDNY.“

Meanwhile, this seems to be their go-to:

Question: Would your father turn on Trump to protect himself?
Giuliani: I can’t believe I’m answering something from Michael Cohen. I mean.. *nervous laugh* no. He has… There is… I don’t really know how to respond to this because it’s a theoretical… pic.twitter.com/M5krgIbVxV

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 29, 2021

I posted about some anti-maskers targeting schools in Beverly Hills a while back. Here they are in my neck of the woods in Santa Monica:

At John Adams Middle School/Will Rogers Elementary in Santa Monica, where anti-mask activists are protesting public safety guidelines requiring masks in school.

Multiple SMPD cruisers nearby.

This is the third such protest in Los Angeles that I’ve documented.

A man walking a dog yells at the protesters to “get the fuck out of my neighborhood.”

A woman tells a protester that she has lost 3 family members to covid. The anti-masker says “it probably wasn’t even Covid that killed them.“

A parent confronts the anti-mask protesters over approaching his son. He tells them they shouldn’t talk to other people’s children.

One protester tries handing out cards to the middle school students as they leave school. One girl tells them to “kill yourselves.”

A student asks one of the protesters if he is a doctor and tries to give him a mask. He asks, “Where’s your data? On Google?”, and then walks away.

One parent, apparently recognizing one of the protesters, yells at the group through his window. “Now I know, you’re that idiot!…We’ve had this conversation before.”

The driver says he has also lost somebody to of Covid, a theme of the day.

The protesters get into a conversation with a girl and her father, Dr. Blaine Pope, who works (it turns out) in public health. They say they shouldn’t be made to wear masks; Dr. Pope says they are missing the “public” part of “public health.”

One Protester tells Dr. Pope, who is Black, that the masks are “a form of slavery.” His daughter exclaims, “We have been through slavery, you have not!”

The conversation between Dr. Pope and the protesters went on for some time. I will excerpt portions of it at the end.

Then the High Schoolers got involved. Appropriately absurdist, in my view. How else can you respond to this lunacy?

A group of Santa Monica High seniors mount a counter protest…to protest labor conditions at the Krusty Crab? They are soon joined by Squidward.

“Krusty Krab Unfair” and “Valet Parking” among the counter protesters’ signs

• 

• 

• 

Still more counter protesters show up, this time with “legalize ranch” and “I hate signs” signs.

One of the anti-maskers tries engaging with the high schoolers, asking where the Krusty Krab is.

The responses:
– “At the bottom of the ocean.”
– “Valet parking.”
– “Sus.”
– “The Krusty Krab is a metaphor for society.”

The protesters decide to leave, telling the high schoolers that they are “so indoctrinated.” As they go, the seniors tell them not to forget valet parking or legalizing ranch.

The protesters tell me that they plan on going to County Supervisor Shiela Khuel’s house next—a frequent target of their protests.

Dr. Pope asks an anti-masker to explain what “agenda” COVID-19 serves and to name the “they” behind it. The protesters answer that the agenda “is about control” in order to “depopulate the world.”

“For what end?”

“I just told you, it’s about control. It’s about depopulation.”

The protesters, who seem skeptical whether COVID-19 is even a real virus, argue that nobody is actually dying from COVID. Dr. Pope points out that COVID can precipitate a health crisis in vulnerable people.

Update: I was sent a screenshot of one of the protesters expressing dismay at the kids’ reactions.

They say that they “expected some kids to join us.” Instead, they were met by kids who “were dressed like they were grooming to become antifa.”

“They gave us middle fingers…”

Originally tweeted by Samuel Braslow (@SamBraslow) on May 3, 2021.

Boo hoo hoo. The teenagers had green hair! Oh lordy!

There is more at this link if you’d like to see some Santa Monica residents and the county supervisor Sheila Keuhl try to confront these people with facts and logic. I think the high school kids had their number.

Joy Reid took Tucker Carlson downtown last night:

Karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Just set everything in your hand down and watch this glorious four-and-a-half minute point-by-point takedown of Tucker “Tuckums ” Carlson by the glorious and formidable Joy Ann Reid. Nothing is left of him when she’s done — from his rejection by the CIA to his failed career at CNN and MSNBC to his Dan White Society membership.

This is how it’s done when a white supremacist bully comes to town. Hand it right back on a silver platter while shoving his face in it.

Lol:

So just for the record, I don’t spend a lot of time watching Fox news or the BS factory as CNN’s Jim Acosta colorfully dubbed them this weekend. I like my news and information to be grounded in reality, rather than monetizing my amygdala to keep me on edge and buying MyPillows and gold. However, according to Media Matters, The Root, Crooks and Liars, and others who watch Fox News so you don’t have to, at least three times in last month tucker carlson took time off from badgering strangers in parks and bouncy houses to demand they show him their children’s unmasked faces, to refer to moi as the race lady. The race lady. Why would he call me that? I mean, I used to run track in high school but I’m not that fast. What else could it be? Hmm.

[VIDEO CLIP]

Did he say whitey? Oh, honey, Tuckems, is this really about me or is it about you fixating on race? I mean when you recently went off on me for continuing to mask up post-vaccine jogging in crowded central park, you weirdly weirdly threw in my attending Harvard. Now I don’t know, maybe I’m sensitive to this stuff but it felt like kind of like a dog whistle. Did you want to go to Harvard? Did they reject you? And you think, oh yeah they let the race lady in, affirmative action, ugh.

Well, let me cheer you up, okay? I got into Harvard, Yale, Vassar and University of Denver too because I had A really high GPA and fantastic SAT Scores and that’s how affirmative action works, love. Schools search for smart people from diverse backgrounds so these schools won’t be as dry as the major sports leagues were before they desegregated. See?

Maybe you didn’t have great grades and great test scores and you needed your girlfriend’s daddy to help you get into college, doesn’t mean you don’t have amazing people in your life who love you. I mean, you had all that Swanson money, right? Fish sticks for everybody! And you had fun at trinity after you got bought in right? By the way, what was the Dan White society? You know what, moving on.

Just because the CIA rejected your application, I mean look, things turned out fine for you. Had a great career here at MSNBC — actually that didn’t work out. Great on CNN though, until Jon Stewart humiliated you. but it’s fine. But you’re fine. Things are going great for you.

But back to the whole race thing, i’m not one who spools out over my neighborhood changing like I’m some segregationist housewife from the 1950s. That would be you, Tuckems. And I’m not the one spouting a conspiracy theory that white people will be replaced by Democratic party conspiracy to import nonwhite people to outnumber them, a theory that was also mouthed by the Charlottesville tiki torch nazis. That would also be you!

The reason I continue to mask up in crowded spaces is because I don’t know how many people in those crowds I’m jogging around heard about the court case where your bosses said your show wasn’t news. They listen to you like you are the news and I don’t trust that people who listen to you, Tuckems, are taking precautions against covid rather than freaking out about a piece of cloth and busting into the Target to cough on the cereal boxes like they’re 17th century colonizers touting measles blankets with them.

People like you and your friends and the BS factory are keeping us steeped in covid sickness and rage and paranoia, and the ways in which you, Li’l Tucker are making America worse are why I will continue to keep my mask on in a crowd.

And we’ll have more on your endless-covid hell, the endless-covid hell that the Tuckers of our country who, by the way, are the absolute worst, are helping to create.

What she said.

This NY Times essay from psychiatrist Richard Friedman is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. It makes me feel hopeful in a lot of ways:

The emerging data on mental health during the pandemic suggests a troubling future. Surveys show that Americans have become more depressed and anxious, and experts in a variety of fields have argued that Covid-19 has changed society forever.

While the pandemic has undeniably caused extraordinary stress and sadness, research on human resilience suggests that people will recover from the trauma of the pandemic faster than many believe. And while certain groups may need mental health care for the longer term, it’s also true that humans’ ability to overcome adversity is often underestimated and that an overwhelming majority of people who suffer trauma will not develop mental illness but eventually feel better.

As a psychiatrist, I see this firsthand with patients and colleagues. Most of my patients who had clinical depression and anxiety before the pandemic did not deteriorate during the pandemic. Yes, they were stressed and worried, but I was struck by how this group remained pretty stable.

Earlier in the pandemic I also ran a support group for the anesthesiologists at the hospital where I work. Every day this group of men and women would intubate people with severe Covid-19, exposing themselves to the virus and immense patient suffering. But eventually, the support group disbanded because the members felt they could cope without my help.

This is not to suggest that the impact of Covid-19 on mental health isn’t real, nor that it won’t be long-lasting in some cases. It is real, and it will linger for many. But it’s also important to underscore that most people who are exposed to stress and trauma do not necessarily develop clinical depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Sure, they experience anxiety and sadness, but these mental health states can lift soon after stress abates.

Studies suggest that up to about 90 percent of Americans have experienced a traumatic event, yet the prevalence of PTSD is estimated to be 6.8 percent. So while exposure to traumatic events is common, only a small minority of people develop PTSD as a result. Follow-up studies of trauma victims with PTSD in the general population show that the symptoms decrease significantly within three months after trauma and that about 66 percent of those with PTSD eventually recover.

Trauma does not reliably produce illness, which is important to remember when looking at how people are responding to the pandemic as it unfolds. A recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that from August 2020 to February 2021, the percentage of adults with recent symptoms of anxiety and depression increased to 41.5 percent from 36.4 percent.

But most surveys like this assess symptoms at a given point in time, which could turn out to be transient. These surveys are also conducted online, using rating scales that don’t reliably establish a clinical diagnosis. Other research tracking people with diagnosed mental health conditions haven’t found an increase in symptom severity during the pandemic.

I’ve found that many patients find comfort in learning that most people who are traumatized do not develop psychopathology. The ability to cope with adversity is the essence of resilience — but it doesn’t mean there is no psychological distress. To the contrary, anxiety and sadness are common reactions, but these responses are typically manageable and temporary.

It’s why many people who experience intense stress or trauma go on to live healthy, productive lives. Not all stress is harmful to the brain, and many people cooped up at home during the pandemic largely faced a kind of manageable stress. Once normal life can resume, many people will begin to feel much better.

Chronic unremitting stress that isn’t easily resolved, however, leads to sustained increase of adrenaline and cortisol and can be harmful. Frontline workers were exposed to this type of chronic stress during the pandemic and thus are at much higher risk of developing clinical depression and anxiety. The pandemic also took a disproportionate toll on people of color, who experienced increases in suicide rates in 2020 while overall suicide rates in the country dropped. Making sure these groups have access to care will be critical for their mental and physical health.

Experts have long been interested in why some people are more resilient than others in the face of stress, including after events like wars and natural disasters. Some of it is genetic, and some of it is a person’s life circumstances. Things like having a steady income, family support and access to health care can affect how people handle traumatic events.

But there are things that people can do to foster emotional and physical resilience, including maintaining social bonds, getting regular exercise and finding ways to reduce stress, among other things. Social support, for example, has been shown to strengthen resilience by increasing self-esteem and the sense of control. Social connectedness also inhibits activation of fear and anxiety circuits in the brain.

There is no question that this has been a stressful and brutal year marked by untold loss and grief. I lost my splendid 94-year-old mother to Covid-19, and I’m still sad. But people should feel a measure of relief at having navigated Covid to this point, and not forget the fact that humans are more resilient than we realize. We can bounce back.

I’d apply all of that to the trauma of Donald Trump as well. We can bounce back.

Having finally watched “The Mandalorian,” today’s date is on my mind. The space Western created by Jon Favreau for Disney+ was surprisingly good and spiced with several favorite actors. It took a pandemic to get me back to watching some TV for fun.

Type “May the fourth” into Google’s search bar today and get a cascade of Star Wars images.

CNN reported this morning on some less-than-diplomatic language from the Philippines:

The Philippine foreign minister on Monday demanded in an expletive-laced Twitter message that China’s vessels get out of disputed waters, the latest exchange in a war of words with Beijing over the South China Sea.

The comments by Teodoro Locsin, known for blunt remarks, follow Manila’s protests for what it calls the “illegal” presence of hundreds of Chinese boats inside the Philippines’ 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

“China, my friend, how politely can I put it? Let me see… O…GET THE F**K OUT,” Locsin tweeted on his personal account.”

What are you doing to our friendship? You. Not us. We’re trying. You. You’re like an ugly oaf forcing your attentions on a handsome guy who wants to be a friend; not to father a Chinese province …” Locsin said.

China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chinese officials have previously said the vessels at the disputed Whitsun Reef were fishing boats taking refuge from rough seas.

China’s vessels have been moored at Whitsun Reef, part of the Spratly Islands, “taking refuge from rough seas” since March. Britain’s Telegraph reports that China’s Houbei Type 22 missile-armed fast attack crafts are among the fishing vessels (sign-in req’d):

To expand its territorial claims, it has deployed its navy, coastguard and its maritime militia – dubbed China’s “Little Blue Men,” in reference to the unmarked Russian “Little Green Men” soldiers who appeared in Crimea shortly before President Vladimir Putin annexed the peninsula.

The militia is embedded into China’s fishing fleet to intimidate and squeeze out rival South East Asian claimants to the waters.

The United States is challenging China’s ambitions with its own patrols, and this week the head of the Navy SEALs said it would pivot away from anti-terror operations in deserts and mountains to focus on “maritime” threats posed by Russia and China.

The Philippines alleged on or about April 1 that China is constructing illegal structures there in waters the Philippines claims:

The country’s military said the structures were spotted during maritime patrols conducted on Tuesday, but it did not give the precise location of the structures or more details as to who erected them or as to their construction, saying only their presence violated international law.

China has been accused of using its vast fishing fleet to help assert Beijing’s territorial claims throughout the 1.3 million square mile South China Sea, though China has dismissed accusations it operates an irregular naval force, or maritime militia, as groundless.

The Laws of the Sea gives the Philippines indisputable and exclusive rights over the area. These constructions and other activities, economic or otherwise, are prejudicial to peace, good order, and security of our territorial waters,” Philippines Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said in a statement. “These structures are illegal,” Sobejana added.

China has been making moves to claim most of the disputed South China Sea as its own for a much of the last decade. Half a dozen countries including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Vietnam have claims to parts. Gaius Publius grabbed my attention in 2015 with a post on the strategic choke-point of the Strait of Malacca that lies at the southern end of the South China Sea. Dubbed the Great Wall of Sand, China began dredging in the Spratly Islands, creating manmade ones, and establishing bases there in about 2014. Its neighbors are not happy, particularly the Philippines and its fishermen.

An international tribunal in The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal claim to the bulk of the South China Sea. Naturally, China rejected that ruling.

The U.S. Navy has conducted freedom of navigation trips through waters China now claims it owns to remind China of the disputed nature of those claims. CNN reported that beginning this month Britain will send a flotilla to the area this summer to show the flag A U.S. guided missile destroyer will join them.

What remains unclear is whether or not the fleet will challenge China by transiting the South China Sea.

It’s going to be with us for a long time:

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.

“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”

The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity — by the summer, some experts once thought possible — captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another “why bother” to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.

Yet vaccinations remain the key to transforming the virus into a controllable threat, experts said.

Sigh. Well, I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so:

These people are not babies. They know what they are doing and they have agency. They are unreachable on many things, including this. I do not believe there is anything that will reach them.

It means we are going to have to live with this virus being our midst and come to accept that these people are going to provide hosts for it to mutate into something that the current vaccines cannot defeat. I think that’s just the way it is. They are determined not to do anything to keep that from happening and there’s nothing we can do about it.

I think we need to hope that science comes to the rescue with availability of treatments like the monoclonal antibody treatment that saved Trump (and his elderly cronies with comorbidities) and vaccines that can be turned around quickly to deal with the variants. Counting on herd immunity with people like this in our society is a false hope. They are nihilist know-nothings. And there are millions of them.

Yep. Just hope science can keep up with it.

Have the Republicans over-reached on these voting restrictions, possible hurting their own voters? It sure looks like they might have, which makes sense since a whole lot of the rules they changed benefited their own constituents.

Greg Sargent notes that they are belatedly becoming aware of it — and it’s too late:

Such a moment comes courtesy of this great new report by Amy Gardner of The Post, about the new voter suppression bill in Florida that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign. The bill would make it harder to vote by mail in numerous ways, adding curbs on the use of drop boxes and requiring voters to reapply for absentee ballots with each two-year election cycle.

Some Florida Republicans now fear this could unintentionally make it harder for Republican voters to cast ballots. They worry about the provision requiring reapplication for mail ballots every two years — rather than every four years, as previous law had it — fearing it will confuse voters who expect ballots to be sent to them automatically during midterm elections.

This could have a pronounced impact on seniors and members of the military, Republicans fear. Both are GOP-aligned constituencies, and both rely heavily on vote-by-mail.

It turns out some Republicans wanted to address this problem in a surprising way:One former state party official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations said some Republicans briefly discussed whether lawmakers could exempt those two groups from the provision requiring voters to request mail ballots every election cycle. “Key lawmakers said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” the former official said. “It would raise equal protection problems.”Now, the damage is done, he added. “Now, you’ll have military personnel who might not think they have to request a ballot who won’t get it. And we’ve got senior voters who have health concerns or just don’t want to go out. They might not know the law has changed, and they might not get a ballot, because they’re not engaged.”

This Republican source says Republicans were so worried that this key provision would dampen participation that they talked about getting lawmakers to exempt two of their key constituencies from it, and to selectively apply it to other voters. It wouldn’t pass legal muster and didn’t go anywhere.

That’s quite a glimpse into the mind-set of Republicans supposedly motivated by a pious desire to restore election integrity!

As it is, the new provisions would heavily target African American and newly registered voters, according to University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith, whose calculations show that those demographics disproportionately relied on vote-by-mail in 2020.

However, Smith’s research shows Republican voters also relied to an unexpected degree on vote-by-mail — hence these new GOP fears. As Smith notes: “The GOP leadership has discounted any collateral damage, calculating that the benefit to the party outweighs any harm done to its party faithful.”

I had always understood that absentee voting benefited the Republicans and they were always the ones pushing it. Now that the Democrats have been able to get their voters to do it too they don’t like it. But what will that do to the GOP voters who have come to depend on it? I guess we’ll find out.

Honestly, I think the bigger problem is the new move to have partisan “poll watchers” be allowed to harass and intimidate voters and the move to have partisan weirdos count the votes. I don’t know where that’s going but it’s very dangerous.

I guess Trump just tuned into CNN for the first time in months and heard the term “The Big Lie” so he thought he’d make like Orwell and turn it around. The branding genius always steals his brilliant slogans. “Make American Great Again”, “Law and Order president”, “America First” etc, etc are all lifted from others.

Former President Donald Trump claims to believe it’s only a matter of time before he will be reinstated as commander in, chief, apparently by way of a phony “recount” in Arizona, in which a private firm hired by Republicans is trying to find a way to nullify the 2020 election results in the state.

In video footage shot last week, Trump can be heard apparently telling supporters at his Florida resort that the 2020 election results might be overturned due to the potential findings of the firm “Cyber Ninjas,” which has been enlisted by Republican leaders in the Arizona State Senate to audit the election results in Maricopa County, the state’s major population center.

“Let’s see what they find. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes,” Trump declared in a video that was posted to YouTube, allegedly shot last Wednesday evening. 

“After that, we’ll watch Pennsylvania, and you watch Georgia, then you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin, and you’re watching New Hampshire. They found a lot of votes up in New Hampshire just now … You saw that?” Trump continued. “This was a rigged election, everybody knows it, and we’re going to be watching it very closely,” he added.

One pro-Trump pundit, who works for the far-right media company Real America’s Voice and goes by “Dr. Gina” on Twitter, wrote on Monday that she met with Trump over the weekend and reports that the former president is still obsessing over his defeat in the 2020 election. “I saw 45 this weekend & he stated that he doesn’t want to talk about ’22 or ’24 until 2020 is resolved TO THE SATISFACTION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!” Dr. Gina tweeted. 

[…]

On Monday morning, former Trump sent out a statement declaring that his supporters should begin calling the 2020 election results “THE BIG LIE,” attempting to hijack the phrase from those who have used it to describe Trump’s false claims of election fraud. In a callback to the pseudo-official style of his now-canceled Twitter account, Trump wrote, “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” in a press release from his Save America PAC.

It’s all so very, very stupid. But I can see the Republicans gleefully throwing around “The Big Lie” thinking they are being very clever. I guess we’ll all say now and start arguing about what it means. Which gives me a headache.

The latest Press Run from Eric Boehlert’s Press Run (which you should subscribe to here to get a special discount) is an extremely important look at how the right wing networks are responsible for the current public attitudes about the border. It’s not all Dr Suess and Mr Potatohead. This is real:

One month after falsely blaming the Biden administration for creating a crisis at the southern border, the Washington Post remains oddly reserved regarding good news about the plummeting number of migrant youths now held in U.S. detention centers. The Post for months led the media charge with nonstop, negative coverage about the surge; coverage that often mimics GOP talking points.

But now as conditions at the border improve, much of the media, including the Post, are suddenly less interested in the immigration story.

The good news came on Thursday when CNN published a scoop detailing how the number of unaccompanied children held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “dropped nearly 84% in the span of a month, according to a White House official, underscoring the significant progress made by the administration after reaching record high custody figures.” The CNN report quoted an official who spoke anonymously.

The decline was mostly because the Department of Health and Human Services has opened up a string of temporary shelters to accommodate minors. “That’s allowed for an increasing number of children being transferred out of border facilities to spaces equipped to care for them at a quicker pace,” CNN reported.

The New York Times soon confirmed the “80 percent drop over the past month in the number of migrant children in Border Patrol custody,” and quoted Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

As of Sunday night, a check of Google and of the Post’s archives uncovers no stand-alone reports in recent days regarding “detentions” at the border, or any dispatches quoting Mayorkas about the extreme decline.

In March, the Post considered the number of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells to be a very big deal. In fact, they reflected “the magnitude of the crisis” Biden faced. Today, the Post considers the plummeting number of migrant teens and children in detention cells to be less newsworthy. On April 23, the Post published just a single sentence about how the administration had reduced, “by more than half the number of unaccompanied teens and children held in dangerously overcrowded Border Patrol stations and tent facilities.”

The relative silence is telling considering the Post for months has been committed to breathless border coverage. Leaning heavily into conservative talking points about how the border surge was threatening to sink Biden’s entire presidency, the Post over and over posted doomsday headlines:

“Biden administration rushes to accommodate border surge, with few signs of plans to contain it“

“Biden officials fall behind in race to add more shelter space for migrant teens and children“

“Biden faces growing political threat from border upheaval“

 “‘No end in sight’: Inside the Biden administration’s failure to contain the border surge“

 “At the border, a widely predicted crisis that caught Biden off guard“

That final headline was published just days ago. Meaning, the Post is still pushing the bogus narrative that Biden badly bungled the border and created the “crisis.”

Five weeks ago, the Post uncorked a finger-pointing, front-page piece designed to portray the White House as standing on the brink of a defining and fatal failure. The article was drenched in politics instead of policy — “Republicans are reveling in the administration’s border problems.” The piece stressed the issue of immigration could be a loser for Democrats — it could cost them the House in 2022! — and even “overshadow” the administration’s success in vaccinating tens of millions of Americans in recent week.

The Post’s GOP-friendly report also included no context for how Biden’s new administration had been addressing border crossings while at the same dealing with the aftermath of a deadly insurrection, an impeachment trial, rolling out an unprecedented, nationwide vaccination regime, and passing the largest social spending bill in U.S. history by a single vote in the Senate.

If the Biden administration were to blame for the migrant crisis, if its missteps were the reason for the rising number of border detentions, as the Post insisted in March, doesn’t it stand that the Biden administration deserves credit for the sweeping reduction at the border that’s now unfolding? Or does the Post only consider bad news for the White House to be real news? The Post literally ran a border detention story that included this quote in the headline: “No End in Sight.” Now, according to the last figures, there is end is sight.

The paper has hardly been alone in echoing apocalyptic GOP rhetoric about the border this year. In a highly unusual move, ABC This Week in late March staged its entire Sunday program from the border in order to focus on the “emerging crisis for the Biden administration.” During the president’s inaugural press conference that month, he was peppered with questions about the border (a topic the GOP was pushing), and was not asked a single question about Covid-19 (a topic the GOP was not).

In terms of the amount of border news coverage this year, it’s been eye-popping, as the press continues to take its cues from Republicans. During Biden’s first nine weeks in office, immigration was the third most-common topic of new coverage, according to a new Pew study — and that coverage was overwhelmingly negative. That volume of immigration coverage is especially startling considering the topic didn’t really gain traction until six weeks into Biden’s presidency. Then the media avalanche arrived.

The press and the GOP helped create the border “crisis” this year. Now they need to acknowledge reality.

The border has faded from the national news for the moment. But it will come back as soon as Murdoch and the GOP decide they need it. It’s important that the press recognize how they are being played on this. “Both-sidesing” this issue is cruel and inhumane and they need to stop it. And when the situation improves they sure as hell have a responsibility to report it.

You can subscribe to Eric’s great newsletter here with a nice discount for Hullabaloo readers. 🙂