Month: June 2021

This excerpt from the new book about the Trump campaign is just enraging. If you ever thought there was any justice in this world, this will disabuse you of that fact. We can only hope there is some kind of karma for Donald Trump in another life because in this one he has gotten away with mass murder even as heroic efforts were made to save his life when he recklessly allowed himself to catch COVID:

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s phone rang with an urgent request: Could he help someone at the White House obtain an experimental coronavirus treatment, known as a monoclonal antibody?

If Azarcould get the drug, what would the White House need to do to make that happen? Azar thought for a moment. It was Oct. 1, 2020, and the drug was still in clinical trials. The Food and Drug Administration would have to make a “compassionate use” exception forits use since it was not yet available to the public. Only about 10 people so far had used it outside of those trials. Azar said of course he would help.

Azar wasn’t told who the drug was for but would later connect the dots. The patient was one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers: Hope Hicks.

A short time later, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn received a request from a top White House official for a separate case, this time with even greater urgency: Could he get the FDA to sign off on a compassionate-use authorization for a monoclonal antibody right away? There is a standard process that doctors use to apply to the FDA for unapproved drugs on behalf of patients dealing with life-threatening illnesses who have exhausted all other options, and agency scientists review it. The difference was that most people don’t call the commissioner directly.

The White House wanted Hahn to say yes within hours. Hahn, who still did not know who the application was for, consulted career officials. The FDA needs to go by the book, the officials insisted. Hahn relayed the message back to the White House. They kept pressing him to effectively cut corners. No, we can’t do that, Hahn told them several times. We’re talking about someone’s life. We have to actually examine the application to make sure we’re doing it safely.

When Hahn later learned the effort was on behalf of the president, he was stunned. For God’s sake, he thought, it’s the president who’s sick, and you want us to bend the rules? Trump was in the highest-risk category for severe disease from covid-19 — at 74, he rarely exercised and was considered medically obese. He was the type of patient with whom you would want to take every possible precaution. As it did with all compassionate-use applications, the FDA made a decision within 24 hours. Agency officials scrambled to figure out which company’s monoclonal antibody would be most appropriate given the clinical information they had, and selected the one from Regeneron, known simply as Regen-Cov.

A five-day stretch in October 2020 — from the moment White House officials began an extraordinary effort to get Trump lifesaving drugs to the day the president returned to the White House from the hospital — marked a dramatic turning point in the nation’s flailing coronavirus response. Trump’s brush with severe illness and the prospect ofdeath caught the White House so unprepared that they had not even briefed Vice President Mike Pence’s team on a plan to swear him in if Trump became incapacitated.

For months,the president had taunted and dodged the virus, flouting safety protocols by holding big rallies and packing the White House with maskless guests. But just one month before the election, the virus that had already killed more than 200,000 Americans had sickened the most powerful person on the planet.

Trump’s medical advisers hoped his bout with the coronavirus, which was far more serious than acknowledged at the time, would inspire himto take the virus seriously. Perhaps now, they thought, he would encourage Americans to wear masks and put his health and medical officials front and center in the response. Instead, Trump emerged from the experience triumphant and ever more defiant. He urged people not to be afraid of the virus or let it dominate their lives,disregarding that he had had access to health care and treatments unavailable to other Americans.

It was, several advisers said, the last chance to turn the response around. And once the opportunity passed, it was the point of no return.

The week leading up to Trump’s infection was frenzied, even by his standards. On Saturday, Sept. 26,he had hosted a party with scores of maskless attendees to Coney Barrett as his pick for Supreme Court justice. The celebrations had continued indoors, where most people remained maskless. By that time, the virus was surging again,but Trump’s contempt for face coverings had turned into unofficial White House policy. He actually asked aides who wore them in his presence to take them off. If someone was going to do a news conference with him, he made clear that he or she was not to wear a mask by his side.

The day after the Supreme Court celebration, Trump had also hosted military families at the White House. At Trump’s insistence, few were wearing masks, but they were packed in a little too tight for his comfort. He wasn’t worried about others getting sick, but he did fret about his own vulnerability and complained to his staff afterward. Why were they letting people get so close to him? Meeting with the Gold Star families was sad and moving, he said, but added, “If these guys had covid, I’m going to get it because they were all over me.” He told his staff that they needed to do a better job of protecting him.

Has there ever been a bigger asshole? Ever??? Has there ever been someone who deserved to be felled by that deadly virus?

Two days after that, he flew to Cleveland for the first presidential debate against his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Trump was erratic that whole evening, and he seemed to deteriorate as the night went on. The pundits’ verdicts were brutal.

Almost 48 hours later, Trump became terribly ill. Hours after his tweet announcing he and first lady Melania Trump had coronavirus infections, the president began a rapid spiral downward. His fever spiked, and his blood oxygen level fell below 94 percent, at one point dipping into the 80s. Sean Conley, the White House physician, attended the president at his bedside. Trump was given oxygen in an effort to stabilize him.

The doctors gave Trump an eight-gram dose of two monoclonal antibodies through an intravenous tube. That experimental treatment was what had required the FDA’s sign-off. He was also given a first dose of the antiviral drug remdesivir, also by IV. That drug was authorized for use but still hard to get for many patients because it was in short supply.

Typically, doctors space out treatments to measure a patient’s response. Some drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies, are most effective if they’re administered early in the course of an infection. Others, such as remdesivir, are most effective when they’re given later, after a patient has become critically ill. But Trump’s doctors threw everything they could at the virus all at once. His condition appeared to stabilize somewhat as the day wore on, but his doctors, still fearing he might need to go on a ventilator, decided to move him to the hospital. It was too risky at that point to stay at the White House.

Many White House officials and even his closest aides were kept in the dark about his condition. But after they woke up to the news — many of them were asleep when Trump tweeted at nearly 1 a.m. on Friday that he had the virus —Cabinet officials and aides lined up at the White House to get tested. A large number had met with him the previous week to brief him about various issues or had traveled with him to the debate.

It was unclear even to Trump’s closest aides just how sick he was. Was he mildly ill, as he and Conley were saying, or was he sicker than they all knew? Trump was supposed to join a call with nursing home representatives later that day as part of his official calendar. Officials had been scheduled to do it in person from the White House, but that morning they were informed the call would be done remotely. Trump’s aides insisted that he would still be on it.

As one aide waited in line for a coronavirus test, she saw Conley sprint out of his office with a panicked look. That’s strange, the aide thought. An hour or two later, officials were informed that Pence would be joining the nursing homes call. Trump couldn’t make it.

Trump’s condition worsened early Saturday. His blood oxygen level dropped to 93 percent, and he was given the powerful steroid dexamethasone, which is usually administered if someone is extremely ill (the normal blood oxygen level is between 95 and 100 percent). The drug was believed to improve survival in coronavirus patients receiving supplemental oxygen. The president was on a dizzying array of emergency medicines by now — all at once.

Throughout Trump’s time in the hospital, his doctors consulted with the medical experts on the White House coronavirus task force whom the president had long ago discarded. They talked to Hahn, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, seeking input about his treatment.

Trump and his aides had ignored numerous warnings from the task force doctors that they were putting themselves and everyone in the West Wing at risk by their cavalier behavior. Over the past eight months, Trump had come dangerously close to the virus a number of times. Those repeated escapes had made the White House more careless, constantly tempting fate. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, and Redfield wrote to top aides after every White House outbreak, warning them that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was not safe. Birx took her concerns to Pence directly. This is dangerous, she told him. If White House staff can’t or won’t wear masks, they need to be more than 10 feet away from one another. This is just too risky.

Their warnings had gone unheeded, and now some would pay aprice. Trump hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, but his aides had spelled out the choice: He could go to the hospital Friday, while he could still walk on his own, or he could wait until later, when the cameras could capture him in a wheelchair or gurney. There would be no hiding his condition then.

At least two of those who were briefed on Trump’s medical condition that weekend said he was gravely ill and feared that he wouldn’t make it out of Walter Reed. People close to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said he was consumed with fear that Trump might die.

It was unclear if one of the medications, or their combination, helped, but by Saturday afternoon Trump’s condition began improving. One of the people familiar with Trump’s medical information was convinced the monoclonal antibodies were responsible for the president’s quick recovery.

Throughout the day Saturday, Oct. 3, the restless Trump made a series of phone calls to gauge how his hospitalization was being received by the public. In all likelihood, the steroid he was taking had given him a burst of energy, though no one knew how long it would last. Perhaps buoyed by that, Trump continued to post on Twitter from the hospital, anxious to convey that he was upright and busy.At one point Trump even called Fauci to discuss his condition and share his personal assessment of the monoclonal antibodies he had received. He said it was miraculous how quickly they made him feel much better.

“This is like a miracle,” Trump told his campaign adviser Jason Miller in another one of his calls from the hospital. “I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t feeling that great.”

You have to love “I’m not going to lie” coming from Donald Trump.

This next part is particularly enraging. The head of the CDC was praying that the president would be changed by his experience and stop pushing policies and messages that were killing people by the tens of thousands every week. What utter bullshit:

Redfield spent the weekend Trump was sick praying. He prayed the president would recover. He prayed that he would emerge from the experience with a newfound appreciation for the seriousness of the threat.And he prayed that Trump would tell Americans they should listen to public health advisers before it was too late. The virus had begun a violent resurgence. Redfield, Fauci, Birx and others felt they had limited time to persuade people to behave differently if they were going to avoid a massive wave of death.

There were few signs that weekend that Trump would have a change of heart. It had already been a battle to get him to agree to go to Walter Reed in the first place. Now, he was badgering Conley and others to let him go home early. Redfield heard Trump was insisting on being discharged and called Conley on the phone. The president can’t go home this early, Redfield advised the doctor. He was a high-risk patient, and there were no guarantees that he wouldn’t backslide or experience some complication. (Many covid-19 patients seemed to be on an upswing and then quickly deteriorated.) Trump needed to stay in the hospital until that risk had passed. Conley agreed but said the president had made up his mind and couldn’t be convinced otherwise.

If they couldn’t keep him in the hospital, the advisers hoped that Trump would at least emerge from Walter Reed a changed man. Some even began mentally preparing to finally speak their minds. It would surely be the inflection point, they all thought. There’s nothing like a near-death experience to serve as a wake-up call. It was, at the end of the day, a national security failure. The president had not been protected. If this fiasco wasn’t the turning point, what would be?

Just as the country had been watching a few days before, many people tuned in again as Trump took Marine One back to the White House’s South Lawn on Monday night. They saw him step out in a navy suit, white shirt and blue-striped tie, with a medical mask on his face. He walked along the grass before climbing the steps to the Truman Balcony.

But Trump didn’t go inside. It was a moment of political theater too good to pass up — as suffused with triumph as his trip Friday had been humbling. He turned from the center of the balcony and looked back toward Marine One and the television cameras. It was clear that he was breathing heavily from the long walk and the climb up the flight of stairs.

Redfield was watching on television from home. He was praying as Trump went up the steps. Praying that he would reach the Truman Balcony and show some humility. That he would remind people that anyone could be susceptible to the coronavirus — even the president, the first lady and their son. That he would tell them how they could protect themselves and their loved ones.

But Trump didn’t waver. Facing the cameras from the balcony, he used his right hand to unhook the mask loop from his right ear, then raised his left hand to pull the mask off his face. He was heavily made up, his face more orange tinted than in the photos from the hospital. The helicopter’s rotors were still spinning. He put the mask into his right pocket, as if he was discarding it once and for all, then raised both hands in a thumbs-up. He was still probably contagious, standing there for all the world to see. He made a military salute as the helicopter departed the South Lawn, and then strode into the White House, passingstaffers on his way and failing to protect them from the virus particles emitted from his nose and mouth.

Right then, Redfield knew it was over. Trump showed in that moment that he hadn’t changed at all. The pandemic response wasn’t going to change, either.

He has never changed and never will. The fact that he got away with this, that tens of thousands of his supporters followed his lead and refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis and came our a month later to vote for even more of this rank incompetence and dishonesty is mind-boggling.

There is no justice in this world.

The more you know …

I yield my time to Mehdi Hasan:

Take notes. They will come in handy. Especially this Lincoln quote from his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861. It was not a sunny speech. Lincoln spoke to perilous times for the Union. Seven Southern states had already approved articles of secession:

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

The context of Lincoln’s speech is important.

Remember Jan. 6th.

“There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters.”

Thus saith the three Republicans and one Democrat from the Michigan Senate oversight committee charged with investigating allegations of fraud in 2020. Their report issued Wednesday recommended that the attorney general “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.” It would be “a complete waste of time” to consider their allegations further since those making them have “zero credibility.”

Detroit News:

The northern Michigan Republican stronghold of Antrim County initially reported that Democrat Joe Biden won the county, but canvassing led to the correction of the results and showed Trump overwhelmingly won there.

The report also delved into controversial claims made after the election, including that hundreds of dead people voted and almost 290,000 illegal votes were cast by absentee ballot.  

While the investigation found that there are “glaring issues that must be addressed” in state election law, it added there is “no evidence presented at this time” to prove “significant acts of fraud” occurred to subvert the will of voters. The committee recommended giving county clerks the ability to remove deceased voters from the Qualified Voter File, opposed the mass mailing of absentee voter applications and urged the Michigan Bureau of Elections to investigate possible partisan poll worker recruitment in Detroit and Wayne County.

Clerical errors were made

The supposed fraud allegations are typical.

A clerical error assigned the vote of a dead man to his son with the same name living at the same address.

The Voter Integrity Project alleged hundreds of thousands of absentee voter ballots were mailed to Michigan voters without previously being requested. That never happened. VIP called 1,500 persons “and asked if they had received a ballot without requesting it.” VIP then extrapolated from positive responses to there being hundreds of thousands of “illegal ballots.” The investigation found that many on the list “equated receiving an absentee ballot application with receiving an absentee ballot” and did not know the difference. Voting a ballot after requesting one via an unsolicted application “is not an illegal action by a lawful voter and it is not indicative of fraudulent or illicit behavior of the voter nor of an illegitimate vote.”

And the alleged middle-of-the-night “ballot dump”? No evidence for that either, the committee concluded (whatever claims witnesses made in Rudy Giuliani’s binder of affidavits). “Those drawing such conclusions in their affidavits and testimony were asked to provide proof that something illegal actually occurred but no proof that ballots were fraudulent was provided or found by the Committee in testimony or in subpoenaed records.”

Not that the committee found no issues. Just not so much with actual voters. Initial vote-counting errors in Antrim county resulted from “human errors by election officials, including the failure to update equipment after changing the ballot design,” reports Detroit News. Those errors sparked a cascade of conspiracy theories.

Eric Boehlert at PressRun:

The withering Michigan rebuke is reminiscent of Arizona Republican election officials who have strenuously denounced the charade “audit” that Trump conspiracists have been conducting for months there with no end in sight. (Most recently, they transported Arizona voting system data to a secret hideout in Montana.)

“This is insane just from a competence standpoint,” Arizona Republican Stephen Richer recently told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I mean, there is no good reason for doing this.” Added former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R): “I think they should maybe just call it quits. I don’t think that it’s going to serve any purpose. It’s not going to change the election.” 

The sweeping Michigan conclusions this week come as Trump loyalists there push for an Arizona-style ballot review.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

The thorough debunking by the Republican-led senate panel would not stop the Republican-led Michigan state legislature from moving swiftly to make voting harder anyway, including passing on Wednesday bills tightening voter ID rules (Detroit Free Press):

Michigan already requires voters to present an ID at their polling locations. But under current law, voters who don’t have an ID when they show up can sign an affidavit affirming their identity and vote normally. SB 303, which passed the House along a party-line vote, would eliminate that option. 

Instead, voters who don’t present an ID on Election Day would have to cast a provisional ballot. SB 304, which also passed the House along party lines, would allow those provisional ballots to be counted  only if a voter goes to his or her local clerk’s office and presents an ID within six days of the election. Earlier versions of the bills were passed in the Senate June 16. The two bills have been returned to the Senate.

Because for voter fraud conspiracists and their lawmaking enablers, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Voter confidence they have worked assiduously to undermine must be restored. Someone must be punished. Those someones are voters Republicans believe are likely to vote for Democrats.

The only organized, wide-scale effort to subvert the will of voters is happening in plain view in GOP-controlled legislatures across the country.

If you have a few minutes and you’d like to learn a little something about the pathetic, misogynist boys who identify as incels take a peek at this video. It’s fascinating:

It’s a whole world of spoiled little guys who think their mere existence privileges them to be loved by beautiful women despite the fact that they are assholes. Misogyny doesn’t get any starker.

One of the most interesting developments in the neo-fascist rise of the GOP is the fact that they’ve turned on the police and the military. (They will deny it, of course, but we’ve seen the footage.)

Here’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs defending the idea that people should be able to read and discuss anything. Because .. well, he believes that it’s important to understand the world, something in which the right has no interest:

All you have to do is look at the shallow, little, MAGA party boy, Matt Gaetz, in that clip to see what the GOP has become. It’s pathetic.

I think this piece by Never-Trumper Tim Miller is a good explanation of what makes up the uneasy alliance between that faction and people like me (and maybe you.) It’s not that we’re all holding hands and singing kumbaaya while waving an American flag. It’s that there is an overwhelming, common concern that we really are in deep shit and there is a need for a popular front or we will be sorry. There are plenty of people on the left who disagree with that, many of whom are my friends. I think we’ve managed to deal pretty congenially with our differences, mostly because virtually the entire center-left (with the exception of a few establishment fools — looking at you, Sinema) are in agreement that something very bad is happening.

Anyway, it turns out there are not only differences between the Trump cult and the Never Trumpers, but also among the Never Trumpers. And it’s not pretty. But it’s important to recognize the differences in this group. There are some, like Miller and Stuart Stevens and some others who have recognized that it’s a Republican party and conservative movement problem, not just a Trump problem. Others just don’t like the Orange Julius Caesar and are fine with the anti-democratic trajectory of the GOP and still so hung up on ideological differences with the left that they can’t bring themselves to admit where the rot in our system really lies.

Anyway, here’s Miller’s account of himself in this situation:

It’s not every day you get called an arrogant whore on the internet. Well, actually, strike that, I get called a whore on the internet quite a lot. But it’s not every day that it is part of an invective-filled rant, and the ranter is not just some rando with an anime avatar but a prominent ostensible ally in the cause of Never Trumpism.

And yet . . . that’s what happened last Friday, when Cliff Asness, a Never Trumper and longtime funder of center-right Republican campaigns and think tanks, went on an extended Twitter screed about us deranged Bulwarkers, stemming from his view that our support for a commission that would investigate the January 6 insurrection is an unacceptable sop to our new Democratic allies. (Everyone has to draw a line somewhere, I guess.)

You can look up Asness’s many tweets on the topic for yourself, if you want, but the gist is that while Bulwark types “are right about Trump,” we are “insane and gross” and “slimy.” We are “grifters” and “whores and liars.” And why? Because we abandoned our “lifetime principles” and “stated beliefs”—and we are supposedly “new progressives” since “that is where [our] bread is buttered.” (FWIW, I explained my political evolution at great length here for anyone interested to read it.)

I hate to elevate this silly little bit of pre-holiday-weekend shit-stirring, but the outburst was reflective of a broader trend I’m noticing among the Never Trump diaspora, and of other fissures in our nation’s politics today, so I thought it worth saying a bit about it at a greater length than Twitter affords.

While an outsider might assume that the natural foes of the Bulwark are the MAGA populists and possibly the Bernie wing of the Democratic party, the further we get away from the 2020 campaign, the clearer it is that some of the most passionate battles are taking place much closer to home. When you think about it, this makes sense. With Trump exiled to Liberace Lagoon in South Florida, much of the heat is lost from our old confrontations. There are only so many times that a moron in a MAGA hat can hurl impotent insults at you before everyone gets bored.

It’s the family breakups that are the most bitter. Just ask Adam Driver and ScarJo. Well, it turns out that’s true of our little Never Trump family, too. It was always a tenuous alliance. We were united not by unanimity on an issue or a view of government per se, but more in revulsion to one ignoramus obviously unfit for the presidency.

We Never Trumpers always had differing views on some of the particulars. We could argue about how much of the regulatory state to dismantle or which gun reforms encroached too much on liberty. But we were singing the same tune, if not always in perfect harmony. We shared what we thought were some foundational views—certain values that we consider fundamentally American: pluralism, freedom of speech and religion, free markets and free people. That whole deal.

So over the past six months it has been jarring to discover that for all the things we agree on, it turns out that we have a deep disagreement on a few matters that some people consider cardinal.

Speaking only for myself (although I believe this is true of most of my Bulwark colleagues and many of the “red dogs” out there in America): I look at the current state of politics and have assessed that the biggest threat to the country by far is the racist, nationalist Trumpers who just tried to steal an election and are prepping the ground for an encore. Trump and his potentially more competent imitators imperil our entire democratic experiment. And the first, second, and third priorities for ensuring our kids and grandkids enjoy the blessings of a small-l liberal America is relegating those who are complicit in this anti-democratic scheme to the museum of historical failsons alongside George Wallace, Charles Lindbergh, and Jefferson Davis.

If you have that perspective and you see people whom you thought were your allies enabling and making excuses for these fascistic shitbirds, it really pisses you off. You will forgive me if I get kind of hot when I hear people talk about voting for Edmund Burke and Ronny Reagan’s ghost when the actual choices on the table were a replacement-level capitalist Democrat and an inveterate liar with authoritarian aspirations who threatens everything you hold dear.

It beggars belief that someone who agrees with my general assessment of Trump could then look at the choice between him and Biden and throw up their hands and call it a wash. There’s plenty to criticize about the Biden administration, and I won’t be shy about it, but the idea that it isn’t preferable by a gazillion miles to having the country run by the people still flirting with a MAGA coup, well, I find that to be completely bonkers.

So all that rattles around the old brain for a while. You get more and more upset about your former compatriots equivocating. You see them send a tweet or two mocking the people who think like you. And you wonder: What is wrong with these fuckers? Are they running a grift? Are they on the take? After all this, could they be secret fascists, too? And sometimes you lash out. Twitter isn’t great for restraint, you may have heard.

Then on the other side you have the view of people like Asness. I think his perspective is shared by some of our friends over at the Dispatch and the assorted Never Trumpers scattered around other more MAGA-friendly conservative media outlets. My sense from conversations with these folks is that, as much as they detest Trump, they see him as impotent and beatable within the old GOP infrastructure, and the Democratic alternatives as unacceptable. They look at our politics and see a very different threat—AOC, the “woke” discourse, and the leftward drift of the Democratic party. They consider Biden’s big spending proposals, the San Francisco school board’s craziness, and the All-Star Game being moved as evidence that it’s the socialists and the “cultural Marxists” who imperil America.

If that’s your point of view, then you look at people whom you consider to be enabling and making excuses for socialistic shitbirds, and that pisses you off. It rattles around the old brain for a while. You get more and more upset about it. You see the Bulwarkers send a tweet or two criticizing Rob Portman or Tim Scott or defending Democrats you think are terrible and begin to wonder: What is wrong with those fuckers? They have sold out all their principles! They must be running a grift for that sweet, sweet Substack cash!

And so one day, after a few pops, you find someone (me in this case) who is guilty of siding with the Democrats on a commission to investigate a coup attempt, you consider that a betrayal, and you fire up your best Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy impersonation, shouting, “Whore! Whore!” After all, the idea that someone who shared your general conservative disposition could abide the “other side” only makes sense if they are on the take.

Now to be honest, I find the perspective of these folks pretty crazy. If someone were to put a gun to my head and order me to choose between turning America into Sweden or Hungary, I’d say Sweden before the gun was even out of the holster. But that’s kind of a false choice anyway, given that Biden resoundly defeated his socialist challenger just last year. As for woke-ism, while there are certainly some concerning elements to the Robin DiAngelo-fication of American life, on balance I consider the most recent racial awakening a net societal plus. As to the idea that the GOP is salvageable, well. . .

But of course I would think those things! That’s the point. Despite sitting in the same section of the chorus, some of us are ending up on opposite sides of the imaginary lines that are likely to define our politics for the foreseeable future.

Negative partisanship comes for all. Even those of us in the mushy middle, the politically homeless, the remnant. Of course this is a bit reductive. There will be exceptions that prove the rule and those who straddle the line (our tribe over-indexes on squishiness), or vacillate based on events or steadfastly resolve that “all threats are bad, this is not a binary choice!” But in general, a person’s answer to the question “Does Trumpism or socialism/woke-ism threaten our republic more?” will give you the answer as to which side of the family feud they fall, at least for the time being.

I know it’s Godwin’s Law territory to evoke Germany in the 30s, but it’s just too apt, here. The socialists and the Communists and the mainstream liberal democrats in the government all continued to focus on their differences with each other as the fascist menace was gaining ground. This a a huge mistake. Something very dangerous is gathering on the right and it’s really a time for picking sides. We can go back to fighting about our ideological differences another day. Right now it’s all hands on deck.

Matt Gertz at Media Matters breaks down what’s going on:

A feedback loop between powerful right-wing institutions is fueling the GOP’s anti-“critical race theory” strategy, which seeks to turn local debates about school curricula into a polarized national issue Republicans can wield in state and national elections.

Critical race theory is an academic legal framework which examines the systemic impact of racism in the United States. But “critical race theory,” like “cancel culture” and “political correctness” before it, also functions as an umbrella term the right-wing movement uses to turn its mostly white adherents’ racial anxiety into political energy. 

[…]

Here’s how the strategy works.

Right-wing think tanks came up with a framework for discussing “critical race theory.” As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who helped launch the campaign, has explained, the goal is to “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category” so that people “read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” Other right-wing institutions like the newly established Center for Renewing America and the Heritage Foundation followed up on Rufo’s work, putting on events, producing “toolkits” for local activists, writing model legislation, and convening allied lawmakers to discuss state-level bans.

Advocacy groups use the think tank framework to oppose “critical race theory.” There are now “at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender,” according to an NBC News analysis. Some, like Fight for Schools and Parents Defending Education, are led by longtime GOP political operatives or right-wing policy analysts, while No Left Turn in Education is led by a local activist with a history of toxic rhetoric.

These groups try to garner attention for their flawed interpretation of “critical race theory.” They highlight controversies in their communities, attend and speak at public meetings, lobby public officials, and appear in local and national media. Their on-the-ground efforts create increased demand for the think tanks’ work.

Advocacy work generates press coverage, particularly from right-wing media. Fox News and other right-wing outlets, their audiences seemingly uninterested in President Joe Biden and his agenda, have spent much of the year focused on ginning up culture war outrages. Critical race theory has taken center stage over the last few months, garnering more than 1,300 Fox mentions along with seemingly endless coverage across the constellation of right-wing news sites.

The anti-“critical race theory” advocacy groups are essential to this push. They provide a steady stream of news hooks, often through local media coverage of their efforts, that can be easily turned into articles or segments for the national right-wing media audience. For example, Fox has provided a series of reports about “critical race theory” in schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, often featuring the commentary of Ian Prior, a GOP operative and executive director of Fight For Schools who lives there. (County school officials say critical race theory is not taught in the district.)

Such right-wing media attention gives the advocacy groups a national platform that helps them raise funds and gain new recruits. According to No Left Turn’s Elana Fishbein, for example, her organization’s Facebook page went from fewer than 200 followers to more than 30,000 after she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show; she now claims 30 chapters in 23 states and has said Carlson “launched our movements.” And right-wing media’s focus on the think tanks’ framework increases the influence of those institutions as well.

Media coverage creates the incentive for GOP politicians to take action. Republican politicians are increasingly indistinguishable from right-wing media personalities, latching on to whatever culture war outrage is currently roiling the GOP base rather than trying to grapple with actual societal problems. As Fox and its ilk made “critical race theory” that subject, GOP candidates and officeholders responded to the incentive the coverage created.

Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee put opposition to “critical race theory” at the center of his campaign, presaging a GOP effort to use it as a core part of its political strategy in the 2022 midterm elections. Meanwhile, at least 25 states have reportedly introduced or passed legislation banning “critical race theory” in public schools or taken other steps to supposedly curtail its spread. Florida and Texas, whose governors are potential GOP presidential candidates, are among the states that enacted such bans.

For the right-wing movement, this is a virtuous cycle. The political action provides more news hooks for right-wing media outlets to cover; creates victories for advocacy groups to claim and rally around; and adopts the framework and echoes the text of model legislation crafted and promoted by the think tanks. That in turn creates incentives for more think tank work, more advocacy, more media coverage, and more political action. And every step creates more of a frenzy among the right-wing base, which shows up everywhere from enraged social media engagement to public meeting uproars.

This is important to understand:

The current right-wing target is “critical race theory.” But this strategy is plug-and-play and could be used on a host of issues — the tea party movement of 2009, the opposition to health care reform in 2010, and the anti-social distancing movement of 2020, to take three examples, bear some striking similarities. And the increasingly nationalized character of U.S. politics, the collapse of local newsrooms, and Fox’s outsized influence over the Republican Party and its base have all made it more potent.

He is absolutely right. This is a strategy they have perfected and it works like a charm. But there is one important aspect of this latest that cannot be overlooked. The earlier iterations of this he mentions were all wrapped up in dogwhistles about “freedom ‘n liberty”, the standard cover for right wing racism.

This one is right out in the open. In fact, it appears to be a deployment of the new embellishment that Trumpism has provided: gaslighting aka “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes.” They are lying about the curriculum and they are also projecting the legitimate grievance of Black Americans regarding systemic racism back on to them and claiming that white people are the real victims of racism with this teaching.

It’s headache inducing — but then it’s meant to be.

These are the same people, over and over again tea party to anti- Obamacare,to MAGA, to anti-masking and vaccine to January 6th. We have a radical movement of fools being led around by the nose by big money interests. It’s not Black Lives matter, anti-war protesters or “woke” twitter users. It’s a fascist right wing.

I just can’t fathom how these people think they have any business being around sick people now that the vaccines are easily available. It’s just nuts. The good news is that even in Texas there doesn’t seem to be any tolerance for looney tunes conspiracy theorizing, anti-science health care workers being around immunocompromised adults or sick kids who can’t get vaccinated. There are some limits after all.

More than 150 health-care workers who did not comply with a Houston-based hospital system’s vaccine mandate have been fired or resigned, more than a week after a federal judge upheld the policy.

Houston Methodist — one of the first health systems to require the coronavirus shots — terminated or accepted the resignations of 153 workers Tuesday, spokeswoman Gale Smith said. Smith declined to specify how many were in each category.

They all need to find another line of work.